THE 

REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 , 

SERIAL «t*,ORD 

MAR 2 1845 


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By 

ARCHIBALD MacLEISH 





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Reprinted for private circulation from 

THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY 
Vol. XIV, No. 4, October 1944 

PRINTED IN THE tT.S.A. 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 1939-44 

ARCHIBALD MacLEISH 


T his paper, being a library paper, 
should begin with a warning to 
the cataloger. The author is not 
Archibald MacLeish, though the by-line 
says so. The author is the Library of 
Congress. It would be almost impossible 
for the most gifted and persistent cata¬ 
loger on earth, even though a member of 
the Library’s staff (which she certainly 
would be), to identify the occasional 
sentences I have borrowed from the re¬ 
ports of my colleagues—Mr. Clapp, or 
Mr. Mearns, or Dr. Evans, or Mr. 
Henkle, or Dr. Hanke, or Mr. Rogers, or 
Mrs. Wright, perhaps, or other mem¬ 
bers of the Library’s staff. The reorgani¬ 
zation of the Library of Congress was a 
labor in common of many men and wom¬ 
en, and this account of it is such a labor 
also. If the general orders and other 
documents in which the Library’s or¬ 
ganization was accomplished and ex¬ 
pressed were generally in my words, it 
was not because the work was necessarily 
mine but rather because, being a writer 
rather than a librarian, I prefer the sound 
of my own phrases. If the manuscript of 
this paper is largely in my handwriting, 
it is merely because mine were the last 
hands through which it passed. 

I insist on this not out of modesty 
but out of pride. Of the various changes 


accomplished in my five-year term, I am 
proudest of the change which has drawn 
into the active administration of the 
Library of Congress an increasing num¬ 
ber of the members of its staff. A depart¬ 
ment of government is efficiently run 
when it is run by every man and woman 
in it, each directing the work he has 
to do, whether that work is done by 
many or by one, and that one him¬ 
self. The Library of Congress has not yet 
achieved that ideal; but the professional 
forum, the staff advisory committee, the 
various operating committees, and the 
Librarian’s Conference have carried it a 
long way forward. I could ask no greater 
assurance for the future welfare of the 
Library than its continuing development 
of these instruments and others like 
them. 

But if the author of this paper is not 
what he seems, neither is the paper. It 
calls itself “The Reorganization of the 
Library of Congress, 1939 - 44 .” The im¬ 
plication is that the new Librarian of 
Congress, having just heard himself 
certified by the American Library Asso¬ 
ciation as no librarian, took one look at 
the world’s largest library and proceeded 
to reconstruct it from the ground up. 
Nothing of the kind, I need hardly say, 
happened. I did not set out to reorganize 


CHART I 

Organization of the Library of Congress, July i, 1944 

















































































































THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


3 


the Library of Congress, any more than 
I had set out to become its Librarian. 
The American Library Association was 
quite right. I knew nothing about library 
administration as such in 1939. To be 
entirely frank, I am not sure that I know 
much more about it today, for I am even 
more doubtful now than I was then that 
the administration of a library differs 
essentially from the administration of 
any other organization in which highly 
developed skills and highly developed 
personalities are combined in a highly 
complicated undertaking. 

What actually happened in 1939 and 
1940 and thereafter was merely this: 
that one problem or another would de¬ 
mand action; that to take action it would 
become necessary to consider the effect 
of the proposed action on related situa¬ 
tions; that related situations had, in 
turn, their related situations; and that 
eventually it would prove simpler to 
change several things than to change one. 

The reason will be obvious to anyone 
familiar with the Library as it then was. 
The Library of Congress in 1939 was not 
so much an organization in its own right 
as the lengthened shadow of a man—a 
man of great force, extraordinary abil¬ 
ities, and a personality which left its 
fortunate impress upon everything he 
touched. Only a man of Herbert Put¬ 
nam’s remarkable qualities could have 
administered an institution of the size of 
the Library of Congress by direct and 
personal supervision of all its operations, 
and only he if his administration were 
based upon the intimate familiarities of 
forty years. To succeed Mr. Putnam—if 
one may speak of succeeding a man who 
did not have, and never could have had, 
a successor in the accurate sense of that 
term—to succeed Mr. Putnam was a good 
deal like inheriting an enormous house at 
Stockbridge or Bar Harbor from a wise, 


well-loved, strong-minded, charming 
and particular uncle who knew where 
everything was and how everything 
worked and what everyone could do but 
had left no indications in his will. 

My first reaction to the Library of 
Congress—and my last may well be the 
same—was the conviction that I owed it 
to my successor to leave him an organi¬ 
zation with a momentum of its own. 
The principal difficulty with the old 
Library, from my point of view as the un¬ 
expected and unexpectant heir, was the 
fact that the whole fabric depended from 
the Librarian as the miraculous archi¬ 
tecture of the paper wasp hangs from a 
single anchor. There was the Librarian— 
myself—in his vaulted office with his 
messenger outside. There was the chief 
assistant librarian, the late regretted 
Martin Roberts, in a room across the 
hall, his desk piled with order slips and 
vouchers. There was the office of the 
secretary of the Library—for neither the 
Librarian nor the chief assistant li¬ 
brarian had a full-time secretary of his 
own. And below these two, dependent on 
them for immediate supervision and di¬ 
rection, were thirty-five different and 
separate administrative units engaging 
in activities as various and diverse as the 
administration of the national copyright 
laws, the conduct of chamber-music con¬ 
certs, the procurement of talking books 
for the adult blind, the cataloging of 
books, the care of the Library buildings, 
the provision of reference and research 
service to the Congress, the publication 
and sale of cards to other libraries, the 
purchase of library materials, the service 
of manuscripts and rare books and prints 
to readers, the recruiting of personnel, 
and the provision of learned information 
in most of the languages of the world to 
readers everywhere. 

The so-called Librarian’s Committee 


4 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


(Messrs. Joeckel, Rice, and Osborn) 
which examined the Library at my re¬ 
quest a few months after my appoint¬ 
ment described this situation in the chill 
vocabulary of the science of management 
by calling it 

in all probability the largest and most diffused 
span of control to be found in any American 

library.Small wonder that the Library of 

Congress is often described as a group of li¬ 
braries within a library. It is in effect a loose 
federation of principalities, each with strongly 
developed traditions and with administrative 

and technical idiosyncrasies.There can be 

little doubt that the steady expansion of the 
number of independent organization units is in 
large measure responsible for many of the pres¬ 
ent difficulties in technical operations as well 
as in administration of the Library. Almost of 
necessity, each division has made its own de¬ 
cisions as to the technical apparatus of cata¬ 
logs, shelflists and indexes it has devised and as 
to its relations to the processing operations of 
the rest of the Library. It is not surprising that 
a considered program for the institution as a 
whole hg^ not been developed. 

At the beginning, needless to say, 
there was no question in my mind of “a 
considered program for the institution as 
a whole.” There was merely the ques¬ 
tion of survival. Every personnel action, 
every voucher, every book order, and 
much of the Library’s correspondence, 
except for the most routine communica¬ 
tions, required in theory the Librarian’s 
signature. Since I have a constitutional 
disinclination to signing documents I 
do not know to be right, and since the 
Librarian in his painted vault had no 
possible means of knowing whether the 
greater part of the papers he was ex¬ 
pected to sign were correct or not, the 
situation was difficult—not to say down¬ 
right impossible. Knowledge was sepa¬ 
rated from responsibility, and responsi¬ 
bility from knowledge. Signatures which 
should have been substantial authentica¬ 
tions had become mere formalities. Be¬ 


cause the fiscal officers of the Library, 
like the Library’s great disbursing officer, 
the late Wade H. Rabbitt, were men of 
conscience, industry, and skill, the Li¬ 
brary’s accounts were in good shape; but 
the officer who so declared them over his 
signature had no means of knowing that 
they were without turning himself into a 
chief clerk or accountant. 

The practice would have been un¬ 
satisfactory anywhere. In the Library 
of Congress it was entirely unacceptable. 
The Library’s fiscal operations are com¬ 
plicated, diverse, and difficult to control 
at best. It not only accounts for ap¬ 
propriations which amounted in 1939 to 
$3,107,707 and which have now reached 
$4,326,930. It disposed as well of 
$350,000, this last year, from nongovern¬ 
mental sources, $75,000 of which came 
from its own investments. It operates 
two businesses which gross better than 
$300,000 each per annum—the Copy¬ 
right Office and the sale of catalog cards. 
And it administers two revolving funds 
in its photoduplication service and its 
recording laboratory which support an¬ 
nual sales of about $75,000 and $18,000, 
respectively. Some indication of the com¬ 
plexity of the Library’s fiscal operations 
and procedures is provided by the fact 
that a staff of five highly competent in¬ 
vestigators from the general accounting 
office, who began a survey of these opera¬ 
tions at my request in the fall of 1939, 
were unable to file their final report until 
April, 1942. Some indication of the char¬ 
acter of those operations at the time is 
given by a preliminary report of a rep¬ 
resentative of the division of adminis¬ 
trative management of the Bureau of the 
Budget, who stated in a ‘‘Memorandum 
on Fiscal Administration in the Library 
of Congress” that “in view of the present 
inadequacy of the fiscal facilities of the 
Library and a lack of co-ordination of its 




THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


5 


several fiscal activities, a complete re¬ 
organization appears to be necessary.” 

What was true of fiscal operations was 
true of other operations of the Library. 
With the exception of the administra¬ 
tion of buildings and grounds, which was 
centered in a superintendent, most of the 
Library’s administrative operations were 
performed not in one office but in two or 
three. Even the vital administration of 
personnel matters was thus divided. 
Certain personnel functions were per¬ 
formed in a section of the chief clerk’s 
office. Others were performed in the 
office of the superintendent of buildings 
and grounds. The consequence was that 
the Library lacked the administrative 
supervision and staff to develop a con¬ 
sidered personnel policy. It had no 
grievance procedure, no announced poli¬ 
cies covering promotions and the posting 
of vacancies, no announced policy with 
reference to Library unions or staff re¬ 
lations, and no such systematic re-ex¬ 
amination of Library classifications as is 
necessary to the maintenance of salary 
levels under the classification system. 

It was in large part, therefore, the 
effort of a single Librarian and chief as¬ 
sistant librarian to deal with masses of 
forms, vouchers, pay rolls, and the like 
which led to a study of the possibilities 
of reorganization. But there were other 
and more substantial reasons as well. 
After my appointment was confirmed 
by the Senate but before I took office, I 
was earnestly approached by a number of 
librarians of university and other li¬ 
braries who begged me to “do something” 
about the delay in the delivery of Li¬ 
brary of Congress cards to purchasers. I 
was therefore aware, before I came to 
Washington, that something was wrong 
at some point in our cataloging and card¬ 
selling operations; and I appointed, 
shortly after I took office, a co-ordinating 


committee on processing to look into the 
whole operation and report to me. The 
committee was made up of the chief 
cataloger, the chiefs of the accessions, 
card, and classification divisions, the di¬ 
rector of the union catalog, the chief of 
the co-operative cataloging service, and 
the chief assistant librarian. All the vari¬ 
ous complaints, criticisms, and charges 
which had reached me from librarians 
and others in various parts of the coun¬ 
try were sent along to the committee for 
consideration—complaints that the out¬ 
put per cataloger was down by one-half 
since the beginning of the century, 
charges that filing into the public catalog 
was months in arrears, criticisms that the 
catalogers were untrained, etc. The com¬ 
mittee wisely called in the doctors and 
the specialists. It heard Miss Mann, 
Professor Harriet MacPherson, Mr. Met¬ 
calf, Mr. Gjelsness, Mr. Trotier, and Mr. 
Wright. And, when it reported on De¬ 
cember 9, 1939, it announced findings 
which suggested that something had to 
be done and done promptly. There was, 
said the committee, an unprocessed ar¬ 
rearage in the Library of 1,670,161 vol¬ 
umes—that is to say, better than a mil¬ 
lion and a half of the six million volumes 
and pamphlets (exclusive of maps, music, 
manuscripts, prints, etc.) estimated to 
be held by the Library of Congress at 
that time were not represented in the 
public catalog. And, what was worse, the 
arrearage was piling up at the rate of 
thirty thousand books and pamphlets a 
year. 

A similar, though less spectacular, re¬ 
port was made to me at about the same 
time on the subject of acquisitions. I had 
been struck, as anyone, I think, would 
have been, by the piles of book order 
cards which provided the perennial back¬ 
stop on Martin Roberts’ desk. I had been 
impressed also by the complaints of that 


6 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


devoted and insatiable book purchaser, 
the late law librarian, John Vance. Mr. 
Vance had told me, with courtesy but 
firmness, that he was continually losing 
books he wanted to buy because the pur¬ 
chase forms backed up in the chief as¬ 
sistant librarian’s office. When I ques¬ 
tioned the chief assistant librarian, he ad¬ 
mitted the charge but contended that it 
was necessary for him to examine every 
title proposed for purchase, whether he 
knew anything about the book or not: 
somebody had to do it. 

Since Martin Roberts worked twelve 
to fourteen hours a day in any case and 
since he would have had to work eight¬ 
een or twenty to pass on all book orders, 
it seemed to me clear that something was 
wrong with the administration of the 
purchasing system and perhaps with the 
system itself. I therefore asked all chiefs 
of divisions and consultants (issuing my 
first general order for the purpose) to tell 
me what steps they habitually took to 
inform themselves of the books the Li¬ 
brary should have and of the books it 
could secure. Their replies made it ob¬ 
vious that the Library had no considered 
acquisitions program but depended rath¬ 
er on the activity of sellers in offering 
materials than on its own activity as a 
buyer in deciding what materials it 
needed and seeking them out. I therefore 
appointed a committee of those members 
of the Library’s staff principally con¬ 
cerned with purchases and asked them to 
consider what the existing situation was, 
what acquisitions policy the Library 
should adopt, and how such a policy 
should be administered. This committee, 
called the “committee on acquisitions 
policy,” listened to specialists and ex¬ 
perts from outside the Library, such as 
Dr. Leland, Dr. Raney, Dr. Zook, Dr. 
Adams, Dr. Swingle, Dr. Blachly, Mr. 
Metcalf, and others, and duly made its 


report. Of its recommendations on ac¬ 
quisitions policy I shall speak below. 
What is immediately relevant here is the 
indication given by its report that re¬ 
organization might be necessary in the 
acquisitions procedures as well as in the 
processing procedures and the adminis¬ 
trative practices. The committee in¬ 
formed me that, of forty important sub¬ 
jects listed for study, 

twelve receive relatively adequate attention 
from heads and other members of divisions, con¬ 
sultants, librarians, and other agents; thirteen 
of the forty subjects are partially and inade¬ 
quately provided for; and in fifteen, or over 
one-third of the forty subjects, no general pro¬ 
vision is made for the initiation of orders. Thus 
it appears that general philosophy, American 
and United States history, the social sciences 
and law generally, music, fine arts, oriental 
languages and literature, medical disciplines 
come in the first group; religions, classical 
archaeology, geology, classical and modern 
European languages and literature, the mathe¬ 
matical and physical sciences and agriculture 
fall in the second group; while general history, 
special national histories, modern fields of 
anthropology, the whole subject of education, 
the earth and biological sciences, medical arts 
and specialties (provided for, indeed, in the 
Army Medical Library) and technology come 
under the group for which there is no regular 
and adequate provision as to recommenda¬ 
tions. 

A closely related—an inevitably re¬ 
lated—situation was found to exist in the 
reference work of the Library—in both 
the reference work for Congress and the 
reference work for the government as a 
whole and for the general public. The 
legislative reference service was inade¬ 
quately staffed to perform the duties the 
Library owed Congress, and the general 
reference staff was inadequate to the de¬ 
mands made upon it. A certain number 
of special divisions with subject special¬ 
ists, some of them of the first competence, 
had been created; but they had been 
created rather as opportunity offered 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


7 


than as the service demanded. General 
reference inquiries in fields in which spe¬ 
cial divisions had not been established 
were referred to the reading rooms staff; 
and the reading rooms staff, though an 
able staff and certainly one of the most 
obliging in the world, was not a faculty 
of scholars nor could it offer first-rate 
scholarly guidance in all the fields not 
covered elsewhere. 

Moreover, the combination of refer¬ 
ence functions, book-service functions, 
and custodial functions in the same man 
or group of men was neither efficient nor, 
however it may have looked on the sur¬ 
face, economical. Every assistant wanted 
to be a reference man or, in any case, a 
desk man in the public service; and the 
custodial responsibilities languished. 
There had been a count of materials “by 
estimate only” in 1898 and “a new count 
of printed books and manuscripts” in 
1902. Thereafter there had been a single 
inventory of the classified collections 
which began in 1928 (June) and ended in 
1934 (May), showing 170,692 volumes 
missing from their places. (Of these, ma¬ 
terials represented by 91,359 entries had 
been found by 1941; and by spring, 1944, 
materials represented by an additional 
24,990 entries had been located, reducing 
the entries for missing books to 54,343-) 
No officer of the Library in a position to 
make his voice heard was charged with 
primary custodial responsibilities; the 
various special divisions had their own, 
often conflicting, procedures for book 
care and binding; and a tremendous ar¬ 
rearage of some 373,723; volumes re¬ 
quiring binding and unfit to be used un¬ 
til they could be bound had accumulated. 

It was the attempt to deal with these 
various factual situations rather than an 
a priori decision to reorganize the Li¬ 
brary of Congress which led to the 
changes of 1939-44. And the changes, in 


consequence, were not blueprint changes 
conceived in advance but administrative 
adaptations. The first step was obviously 
to secure the funds necessary for an at¬ 
tack upon the most urgent problems. The 
subcommittee on the legislative bill of 
the House committee on appropriations 
had generously agreed to let me file sup¬ 
plemental estimates three months after 
the date when estimates are properly 
due, and I was thus given a brief period 
to study the Library’s situation and to 
submit a statement of its most pressing 
needs as I then saw them. 

It is hardly necessary to say that the 
document in which this statement was 
presented was something less than a com¬ 
plete account of the requirements of the 
Library of Congress. It did, however, at¬ 
tack the principal problems as they then 
appeared—the failure of the processing 
operations to keep up with acquisitions, 
the lack of subject specialists in numer¬ 
ous fields of legislative and general refer¬ 
ence, the inadequacy of funds for book 
purchase, the shockingly low Library 
salaries, the lack of administrative offi¬ 
cers and administrative controls, etc. 
Special emphasis was put on the alarm¬ 
ing situation in the processing operations 
where eighty-two additional positions 
were requested; on the need for first- 
class reference assistants in the legisla¬ 
tive reference service, where ten addi¬ 
tional positions of this character plus 
some twenty other positions were esti¬ 
mated as necessary; on the lack of sub¬ 
ject specialists to cover the “orphan” 
fields of acquisitions and reference work, 
where the Library had no present cover¬ 
age and where eleven places were 
wanted; on the appropriation for book 
purchase, where an additional $275,000 
was requested; and on Library salaries, 
where $108,720 was requested for within- 
grade promotions while awaiting re- 


8 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


classification. Altogether, an increase of 
the appropriation from $3,107,707 to 
$4,189,228 was asked. 

The subcommittee considered these 
estimates with the care and understand¬ 
ing it has demonstrated throughout the 
five years in which I have been privileged 
to deal with it. And these words, I may 
add, are not put here as a formality or a 
mere politeness. They come from the 
heart. The subcommittee as I have 
known it under the Honorable Emmet 
O’Neal of Kentucky and the Honorable 
Louis Rabaut of Michigan has demon¬ 
strated again and again its devotion to 
the Library of Congress and the things 
for which the Library stands. It has not 
always given us the things we wanted 
most, and it has never given us every¬ 
thing we wanted; but its decisions have 
been just, and its care for the present 
and for the future of the great Library 
for which its appropriations provide has 
been as evident as its judgment and good 
sense. 

The results of my first appearance be¬ 
fore the committee were as mixed as they 
have been since. After a careful two-day 
hearing the committee recommended, 
and the Congress allowed, a total in¬ 
crease of $367,591 in the appropriation 
for the Library. Fifty new positions in 
the processing divisions, together with 
the position of co-ordinator of these di¬ 
visions, were allowed. A $30,000 addi¬ 
tion was made to the book purchase fund, 
and various other increases were voted; 
but the reference specialists in the gen¬ 
eral and the legislative reference services 
were not allowed, nor the position of as¬ 
sistant librarian in charge of acquisitions 
and the scholarly services. For increases 
in Library salaries we were instructed to 
request reclassification by the Civil Serv¬ 
ice Commission. 

The most important gain was, of 


course, the fifty new positions in the 
processing divisions and the new position 
of co-ordinator. It was essential that the 
best use be made of these positions; and 
though I was, and am, grateful for the 
work of the Library’s co-ordinating com¬ 
mittee on processing, I felt it desirable 
to have a completely objective and dis¬ 
interested study made by highly compe¬ 
tent members of the profession not con¬ 
nected with the Library’s staff. Funds 
were made available by the late Fred¬ 
erick Keppel, president of the Carnegie 
Corporation of New York, whose warm 
and imaginative support of the Library 
during his lifetime was a continuing 
source of strength and confidence to me, 
as to so many others who remember him 
with gratitude and affection. And on 
April 10, 1940, a committee, which came 
to be known as the “Librarian’s Com¬ 
mittee,” was set up. Its chairman was 
Professor (now Dean) Carle ton B. 
Joeckel, of the University of Chicago 
Graduate Library School; and the mem¬ 
bers, in addition to the chairman, were 
Mr. Paul North Rice, of the New York 
Public Library, and Dr. Andrew D. Os¬ 
born, of the Harvard College Library. 

The report of this committee is un¬ 
doubtedly one of the most important 
documents in the history of the Library 
of Congress. Submitted, because of its 
character, as a confidential paper, it has 
been regarded as confidential ever since. 

The committee’s principal recommen¬ 
dations were naturally devoted to the re¬ 
organization of the Library’s processing 
operations, but it did not confine itself 
to that field. It also proposed, following 
the earlier Statement of the Librarian of 
Congress in Support of the Supplemental 
Estimates , that book selection and refer¬ 
ence services be combined under an as¬ 
sistant librarian; and it indorsed the pro¬ 
posal of the Library’s committee on ac- 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


9 


quisitions policy that a systematic book 
budget be set up with quotas and allot¬ 
ments to the various subject areas— 
though it did not take up the difficult 
policy question of which subject areas 
and what quotas. On this point the com¬ 
mittee contented itself with the sugges¬ 
tion—often made outside Washington 
but rarely in it 1 —that the co-ordination 
of the activities of the two hundred and 
fifty federal libraries might produce sub¬ 
stantial savings. 

As regards processing, the committee’s 
proposal was that an “acquisition and 
preparation” department be set up un¬ 
der an assistant librarian to combine ac¬ 
cessioning, cataloging, classification, card 
sales, and the union catalog. 

The accessions division was planned as 
the purchasing and receiving agency for 
all books, pamphlets, serials, and other 
materials acquired by the Library, ex¬ 
cept copyright material and current 
newspapers. Its suggested units were: 
order section, gift section, serial record 
section, and a duplicate and exchange 
section. 

The catalog and classification division, 
in the proposed plan, was to be a merger 
of the separate catalog and classification 
divisions. The new division would take 
over the functions of descriptive cata¬ 
loging, assignment of subject headings, 
classification, labeling, and mechanical 
preparation of material for the shelves. 
On the basis of function the following 

1 Two notable exceptions are the Army Medical 
Library and the library of the Department of Agri¬ 
culture, with both of which the Library of Congress 
has worked out co-operative and collaborative pro¬ 
cedures of great and increasing value. Colonel Jones 
and Mr. Shaw, having great libraries of their own, 
realize that the last thing a library of the size of the 
Library of Congress wants to do is to “take over” 
anything—it has troubles enough as it is. They are 
therefore free of the fear of being engulfed which 
effectively keeps many of the other federal libraries 
from even entertaining the notion of collaboration 
with the Library of Congress. 


sections were recommended: descriptive 
cataloging, subject heading and classifi¬ 
cation, and processing. The latter section 
was to include the clerical and subpro¬ 
fessional activities of the new division— 
temporary cataloging, shelflisting, card 
preparation, etc. In certain instances the 
functional principle was to be carried 
over into the organization of subsections, 
including a searching subsection in the 
processing section and a co-operative 
cataloging subsection in the descriptive 
cataloging section. 

The card division was to be continued, 
with the general function of supplying 
printed cards to other libraries, its work 
to be confined to its primary function as 
a sales and distributing agency. It was 
not to attempt to serve as a supplemen¬ 
tary cataloging division or as a book- 
selection agency. The proposed reorgan¬ 
ization of the card division called for five 
sections: administration, accounting, 
searching, card drawing, and stock. 

Finally, because the technical opera¬ 
tions of the union catalog resembled 
those of the catalog and classification 
division, it was recommended that the 
union catalog be incorporated in the 
acquisitions and preparation depart¬ 
ment. 

These specific recommendations were 
combined with a number of comments on 
existing operations which should be 
briefly mentioned. The committee was 
impressed by the difficulties of adminis¬ 
tration in the processing divisions. The 
great complexity of the Library machine 
had prevented effective control of tech¬ 
nical operations and had permitted great 
variations in the quantity, quality, and 
uniformity of work done in the various 
divisions and sections. It had been im¬ 
possible to maintain qualitative stand¬ 
ards of performance because of the enor¬ 
mous increase in accessions. The quality 


10 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


of administration had also declined to 
such a degree that administrators had 
been unable or unwilling to find solu¬ 
tions for the resulting difficulties. More 
responsible administration, more careful 
planning of the work program, and more 
systematic methods of informing and in¬ 
structing the staff regarding their duties 
and assignments were needed. The com¬ 
mittee recommended the preparation of 
a manual showing the general framework 
of Library organization, together with a 
series of divisional and sectional manuals 
showing the detailed procedures followed 
in the various sections. 

The committee’s report also empha¬ 
sized the deficiencies in statistics of cur¬ 
rent additions to the Library as well as of 
total holdings and the failure of the ad¬ 
ministrators to establish individual rec¬ 
ords of work performance in the process¬ 
ing divisions. It was recommended that 
statistics be revised and standardized 
and that individual work records be 
used as tools of administration wherever 
possible. 

In the absence of statistical data the 
committee guessed that the costs of the 
technical processes in the Library were 
extremely high and probably out of line 
with comparable costs in other large li¬ 
braries. A new tradition of efficiency and 
speed in processing activities was rec¬ 
ommended as a prime requisite if the 
Library was to achieve more efficient 
operations at reduced costs. 

It was suggested that the card division 
review its sales program in terms of the 
present distribution of card sales and 
possible extensions of the present system 
to a larger number of subscribers. The 
division of accessions, the committee 
felt, should also review its practices in 
purchasing books and periodicals in 
order to determine whether more favor¬ 
able discount rates might be secured. A 


strong effort should be made to reduce 
the high costs of printing and binding, 
and there must be recognition of the 
need for modifications in the form and 
fulness of cataloging. Finally, a highly 
competent professional personnel must 
be developed. The recruiting policy for 
the professional positions should be 
radically changed, and clerical and pro¬ 
fessional duties should be more accurate¬ 
ly defined. 

It will be evident from this abstract 
of its comments and recommendations 
that the Librarian’s Committee did not 
undertake to present a blueprint for re¬ 
organization but rather a critique ac¬ 
companied by suggestions. Since the 
critique was extensive and the sugges¬ 
tions were numerous, I submitted the 
report to selected members of the staff 
for comment before attempting to make 
up my own mind as to the action to be 
taken. One step, however, was so clearly 
indicated—was, indeed, so urgently nec¬ 
essary—that I decided to take it at once 
and without waiting for the reactions of 
my colleagues to the report as a whole. 
Some kind of departmental organization 
was essential if the Library was to func¬ 
tion at all. The committee had repeated 
again and again its finding that adminis¬ 
trative controls were weak in the Library 
as a whole, as well as within the Library’s 
divisions; and the reason, as the com¬ 
mittee saw it and as the Bureau of the 
Budget had seen it before, was also the 
reason as I saw it: a lack of upper ad¬ 
ministrative staff. 

I therefore issued, at the end of June, 
1940, two general orders (Nos. 962 and 
964) setting up an Administrative De¬ 
partment and a Reference Department. 
Mr. L. Quincy Mumford, generously 
loaned to us by the New York Public 
Library for the purpose, was appointed 
co-ordinator of the processing divisions 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


ii 


on July 2, 1940, to take office on Septem¬ 
ber 1 (General Order No. 970); and on 
September 18, 1940, after my colleagues 
had reported their reactions to the com¬ 
mittee’s report, the Processing Depart¬ 
ment was established by General Order 
No. 981. Since no “department directors” 
existed in the Library, with the excep¬ 
tion of the new co-ordinator of process¬ 
ing, it was necessary to find the admin¬ 
istrators of the new units by assigning 
men from other jobs. 

The director of the Administrative De¬ 
partment was found by assigning to that 
position Mr. Verner W. Clapp, the ad¬ 
ministrative assistant to the Librarian, 
whose position, in turn, had been found 
by reviving the position of executive as¬ 
sistant, which had preceded the position 
of chief clerk. The director of the Refer¬ 
ence Department was found, after vari¬ 
ous essays, by assigning Dr. Luther H. 
Evans, who had become chief assistant 
librarian following the death of that de¬ 
voted and selfless public servant, Mr. 
Martin Roberts. The result was to de¬ 
prive the Librarian of the assistance of 
his general executive officer, giving him, 
instead, officers in charge of the Library’s 
three principal operations. It was not an 
ideal arrangement, but it was an im¬ 
provement. And it worked more or less 
satisfactorily for three years, until the 
chief assistant librarian was able to re¬ 
turn to his post, leaving the administra¬ 
tion of the Reference Department to the 
former reference librarian and superin¬ 
tendent of the reading rooms, Mr. 
David C. Mearns. 

As far as the basic structural frame¬ 
work of the Library of Congress is con¬ 
cerned, its “reorganization” was the di¬ 
vision into departments of the “Library 
proper” to complete the departmentali¬ 
zation begun by the statutory establish¬ 
ment of the Copyright Office and the 


Law Library. Following the issuance of 
General Orders Nos. 962, 964, 970, and 
981, the Library of Congress consisted 
of five departments: Administrative, 
Reference, Processing, Law Library, and 
Copyright Office. One change has been 
made in this structure since. At the end 
of the fiscal year 1943 the Administrative 
Department was liquidated, its units 
being transferred to the office of the chief 
assistant librarian, and an Acquisitions' 
Department was created out of the units 
of the Reference Department and Proc¬ 
essing Department engaged in acquisi¬ 
tions work (General Order No. 1188, 
June 30, 1943). 

But, though the basic change was sim¬ 
ple, the related changes were sometimes 
complicated and can only be understood 
by an examination in some detail of the 
evolution of the three new departments 
within themselves. Since the most ex¬ 
tensive changes were made in the proc¬ 
essing operations, it will be convenient 
to begin there. 

THE PROCESSING DEPARTMENT 

As originally established by General 
Order No. 981 of September 18, 1940, 
the Processing Department consisted of 
five divisions, rather than the four rec¬ 
ommended by the Librarian’s Commit¬ 
tee, but did not include the union catalog 
as the committee had hoped it would. 
Included were the accessions, card, cata¬ 
log preparation and maintenance, de¬ 
scriptive cataloging, and subject cata¬ 
loging divisions. The chief difference be¬ 
tween the committee’s recommendation 
and the general order was that divisional 
status was given by the general order to 
three units which the committee had 
proposed to treat as sections—descrip¬ 
tive cataloging, subject heading and 
classification, and “processing” (i.e., 


12 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


temporary cataloging, shelflisting, card 
preparation, etc.). 

General Order No. 981, however, was 
a preliminary order only. It was followed 
on December 23, 1940, by General Order 
No. 1004, which established departmen¬ 
tal organization in greater detail. The 
principal provisions were these: 

The accessions division continued as 
the purchasing and receiving agency for 
books, pamphlets, and other materials 
acquired by the Library. It received 
gifts, transfers, and deposits, arranged 
exchanges, approved invoices and vouch¬ 
ers for payments, and kept financial rec¬ 
ords of book expenditures and incum¬ 
brances. 

The card division continued to supply 
printed cards to other libraries. Its prin¬ 
cipal function became that of a sales and 
distributing agency. 

The subject cataloging division was to 
perform all functions involving the sub¬ 
ject analysis of books—namely, classifi¬ 
cation, assignment of subject headings, 
and the shelflisting of materials added 
to the classified collections. It was to 

classify books and pamphlets according to the 
Library’s .own classification, and assign subject 
headings to them; assign author or other book 
numbers to them and record them in the shelf- 
list; classify them according to the Decimal 
Classification; and, for the time being, maintain 
an alphabetical record of serial publications. 

The division included the following sec¬ 
tions : subject cataloging, shelflisting and 
serial records, and decimal classification. 

The descriptive cataloging division 
was responsible for the establishment 
of author and title entries and the de¬ 
scriptive cataloging of all materials cata¬ 
loged in the Processing Department. Its 
work was described as including the 
preparation of copy for all entries, except 
subject entries, established in the Proc¬ 
essing Department (music, manuscripts, 


maps, and Orientalia were cataloged in 
the special divisions); the editing of copy 
supplied by other libraries which co¬ 
operate in cataloging; and correspond¬ 
ence with libraries and individuals in¬ 
quiring as to principles and practices 
of cataloging. 

The division consisted of the following 
sections: general catalog, copyright, 
short form, documents, periodicals, soci¬ 
ety publications, law, editions and 
reprint, co-operative cataloging, and 
proof. 

The catalog preparation and main¬ 
tenance division was to centralize the 
clerical and subprofessional work of the 
cataloging processes and to relieve the 
professional workers of those duties. 
It included certain subprofessional du¬ 
ties formerly carried on in the accessions 
and card divisions. The following work 
was assigned to the division: sorting gift 
material; searching orders, gifts, and ex¬ 
changes; temporary cataloging; card 
preparation; filing and maintaining the 
library catalogs, including the process 
file; correcting and adding to catalog 
cards; labeling, perforating, and book¬ 
plating ; mimeographing of catalog cards; 
and general messenger work. 

The division included these sections: 
searching, temporary cataloging, card 
preparation, filing, duplicates and addi¬ 
tions, and labeling. 

In sum, the new department as origi¬ 
nally set up brought together under cen¬ 
tral administrative control all operations 
necessary to prepare newly acquired ma¬ 
terials for the shelves with these excep¬ 
tions : the accessioning of periodicals and 
newspapers (handled in the periodicals 
division of the Reference Department); 
the accessioning of government docu¬ 
ments acquired by exchange (handled in 
the documents division of the Reference 
Department); the accessioning of certain 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




other materials received directly in the 
Reference Department; the cataloging 
of newspapers, maps, prints, music, 
manuscripts, and materials in oriental 
languages (cataloged, if at all, in the spe¬ 
cial reference divisions); and the prepa¬ 
ration of materials for binding (han¬ 
dled in the Reference Department). 

General Order No. 1004 was the con¬ 
stitution and charter of the Processing 
Department down to October 27, 1942, 
when it was superseded by a new general 
order (No. 1163) designed to tighten the 
organization and to make certain 
changes dictated by the experience of 
the department’s first two years. In the 
interim three operations had been added 
to those covered by General Order No. 
981. A process file had been established 
in the catalog preparation and mainte¬ 
nance division in October, 1940, to assist 
in locating books in process and to enable 
the searchers of recommended orders to 
satisfy themselves that the book recom¬ 
mended had not recently been received 
by gift, exchange, or otherwise. A cen¬ 
tral serial record had been set up in the 
accessions division in August, 1941. And 
a duplicate and exchange section had 
been created in the accessions division 
on November 15,1941, which became the 
general exchange section on May n, 
1942, when the division took over re¬ 
sponsibility for the accessioning of gov¬ 
ernment publications coming in by ex¬ 
change, deposit, or gift. In addition, Mr. 
Mumford’s leave of absence had expired 
and Mr. Herman H. Henkle, director of 
the. School of Library Science at Sim¬ 
mons College in Boston, had become the 
first permanent director of the depart¬ 
ment, his appointment dating from Jan¬ 
uary 26, 1942. 

General Order No. 1163 made several 
important changes in the sectional organ¬ 
ization of the department’s divisions, de¬ 
signed (1) to draw related functions 


more closely together in the sectional 
organization; (2) to reduce the number of 
sections to more manageable proportions; 
(3) to increase the field of activity of 
certain sections to make possible greater 
flexibility of work assignment within 
the sections; (4) to concentrate respon¬ 
sibility for technical supervision in the 
descriptive and subject cataloging divi¬ 
sions by designation in each division of 
the position of principal cataloger; and 
(5) to expand the Processing Department 
office to provide for the maintenance of 
personnel records, work records, and 
cost-analysis records on a departmental 
basis. 

In the accessions division the Hispanic, 
law, and general order sections were 
united as units of the newly constituted 
order section; and the general exchange, 
documents exchange, and gift sections 
were united as units of the exchange and 
gift section. 

The serial record was expanded to ab¬ 
sorb some of the serial recording func¬ 
tions of the shelflisting and serial records 
section in the subject cataloging division, 
becoming the serial record section of the 
accessions division. 

In the catalog preparation and main¬ 
tenance division the purchase searching, 
gift searching, preliminary cataloging, 
and process information units were 
united to form the book section. The 
card preparation and filing sections were 
united with the proofreading section 
from the descriptive cataloging division 
to form the card section. The labeling 
unit was transferred from the division, 
plating and perforating of new accessions 
being placed in the purchase accessioning 
unit of the accessions division. Plating 
and perforating of newly bound serials 
and labeling of all classified books were 
transferred to the shelflisting section of 
the subject cataloging division. 

The assistant chief of the descriptive 


14 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


cataloging division became the principal 
cataloger and deputy chief of the divi¬ 
sion, and the assistant chief of the sub¬ 
ject cataloging division became the prin¬ 
cipal cataloger and deputy chief of that 
division—a change designed to concen¬ 
trate responsibility for technical super¬ 
vision of the work in each division. Gen¬ 
eral review of card copy for style was 
assigned to a new officer, the editor of 
card copy, with the transfer of the proof¬ 
reading section to the catalog prepara¬ 
tion and maintenance division. The 
copyright and general sections were 
abolished and the work redistributed to 
the newly established English language 
section and foreign language section. 
The law and documents sections were 
modified to become the American and 
British law and documents section and 
the foreign law and documents section, 
with the work of the former sections dis¬ 
tributed accordingly. 

In the subject cataloging division the 
serial record unit was abolished, its work 
being divided between the shelflisting 
section in the same division and the serial 
record section in the accessions division. 

In the card division the card drawing 
and the stock and supply sections were 
combined to form a card stock and draw¬ 
ing section. 

Finally, the staff of the Processing 
Department office, which had previously 
consisted of director, administrative as¬ 
sistant, and director’s secretary, was ex¬ 
panded and reorganized to provide for 
the maintenance of personnel, work rec¬ 
ords, and cost accounting on a depart¬ 
mental basis. 

A department secretary was added, 
and four clerical positions were trans¬ 
ferred to the department office from the 
divisions. 

These changes completed the design 
of the Processing Department as we see 
that design. One major and two minor 


modifications have been made in the de¬ 
partment since, and there are still proc¬ 
essing operations in the Reference De¬ 
partment which we hope some day to 
put where they belong, but no further 
alteration in the basic structure is con¬ 
templated. 

The minor modifications were the 
transfer from the Reference Department 
to the Processing Department of the 
binding office (binding in our practice is a 
processing operation or a custodial oper¬ 
ation, depending on whose book is being 
bound) and of the union catalog, which 
is also a processing or a reference opera¬ 
tion, depending on which end of the cat 
you pick up first. 

The major alteration was the es¬ 
tablishment of the Acquisitions Depart¬ 
ment, referred to above. Experience con¬ 
vinced us that both the Statement of the 
Librarian of Congress in Support of the 
Supplemental Estimates and the Report 
of the Librarian’s Committee were wrong 
in recommending that the book-selection 
part of book purchasing should be com¬ 
bined with reference work and separated 
from book accessioning. It was clear that 
the people who recommended books for 
purchase would necessarily be reference 
specialists and therefore members of the 
Reference Department. It was clear also 
that the business of purchase would al¬ 
ways be a specialized business requiring 
specialized personnel. But we were con¬ 
vinced that the Library would never re¬ 
ceive the books it should receive until 
all book-selecting operations were cen¬ 
tralized in one administrative unit under 
one administrative head. We therefore 
set up the Acquisitions Department on 
July i, 1943, and transferred to it the 
units of both Processing and Reference 
primarily engaged in book selection and 
purchase. This meant that the accessions 
division transferred its loyalties from the 
Processing Department to the Acquisi- 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


15 


tions Department and that the catalog 
preparation and maintenance division of 
the Processing Department, having lost 
its searching unit to the Acquisitions De¬ 
partment, was abolished, its preliminary 
cataloging section going to the descrip¬ 
tive cataloging division, its proof, card 
preparation, and filing units to the card 
division, and its process information unit 
to the Processing Department office. 

It may be helpful, by way of recapit¬ 
ulation, to let Mr. Henkle describe the 
present organization of his department 
in his own words: 

The descriptive cataloging division is re¬ 
sponsible for preparing preliminary catalog 
entries for all titles directed to the Processing 
Department and for preparing copy for the 
printer of the book descriptions which consti¬ 
tute the content of the Library of Congress 
printed cards, exclusive of the designation of 
subject headings and classification numbers. 
“Descriptive cataloging,” in the range of the 
division’s responsibilities, involves the estab¬ 
lishing of authors’ names to be used officially 
in the Library’s catalogs; the recording of the 
titles and other bibliographical characteristics 
as well as physical descriptions of the books 
cataloged; the editing of the catalog copy for the 
printer; and the continuing correction and 
change of existing catalog entries as called for in 
connection with the cataloging of new acquisi¬ 
tions. The division also carries primary responsi¬ 
bility for the program of co-operative cata¬ 
loging. 

The division consists of seven sections: pre¬ 
liminary cataloging, English language, foreign 
language, American and British law and docu¬ 
ments, foreign law and documents, serials, and 
co-operative cataloging. 

The preliminary cataloging section is the 
point at which new acquisitions normally enter 
the Processing Department from the Acquisi¬ 
tions Department. The section is a key control 
point in the processing operations, being re¬ 
sponsible for preparing the initial master-card 
which, as it proceeds through the cataloging 
divisions, becomes the printer’s copy for Library 
of Congress printed cards, and also carrying re¬ 
sponsibility for distributing items to be cata¬ 
loged to the several sections of the division. 

The division is administered by a chief, who 


has an administrative assistant and a secretary; 
a principal cataloger, who also serves as deputy 
chief of the division; an editor of card copy; 
and the section heads. The division has a staff 
of ninety-one members. 

The subject cataloging division is the suc¬ 
cessor of the former classification division, 
and it inherited responsibility for subject 
headings from the former catalog division. This 
new division has, accordingly, full responsibility 
for the analysis and record of the subject con¬ 
tent of the Library’s collections as it is recorded 
in the public catalog. Intimately involved in 
the functions of this division, too, is the very 
important responsibility for continued review 
of the published classification schedules and 
list of subject headings, in the light of growth 
and change in all fields of knowledge. 

Also within the “subject cataloging” func¬ 
tions of the division is the classification of 
books by the decimal classification system, as a 
service to other libraries. The division has re¬ 
sponsibility, also, for shelflisting all classified 
titles and for performing certain of the terminal 
steps in preparation, namely, labeling all classi¬ 
fied volumes and plating and marking volumes 
which are bound after being received by the 
Library. 

The subject cataloging division consists of 
three sections: subject cataloging, decimal 
classification, and shelf listing. The division is 
administered by a chief, with a secretary; a 
principal cataloger, who also serves as deputy 
chief of the division and directs the work of the 
subject cataloging section; an editor of subject 
headings; an editor of classification; and the 
heads of the decimal classication and shelflisting 
sections. The staff of the division numbers 
fifty-six members. 

The card division is primarily responsible 
for superintending arrangements for printing 
catalog cards, for maintaining the stock of 
cards, and for distribution of Library of Con¬ 
gress printed cards through sales to other li¬ 
braries. Additional functions assigned to the 
division are proofreading the galley proof for 
printed cards, preparing the cards, when print¬ 
ed, for use in the Library’s catalogs, and filing 
printed cards in the public and official cata¬ 
logs and preliminary cards in the process file. 

The division consists of nine sections: catalog 
investigation; searching; revising; documents; 
series order; subject order; card stock and 
drawing; proofreading, card preparation, and 
filing; and the secretary’s office, which includes 


i6 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


the accounting unit. The division is adminis¬ 
tered by a chief, with a special assistant and the 
staff of the secretary’s office, an assistant chief, 
and the heads of the sections. The staff of the 
division numbers one hundred and fifty-seven, 
with occasional additional assistants employed 
on an hourly basis. 

The union catalog division exists primarily 
to serve American libraries and research insti¬ 
tutions by developing the union catalog of the 
holdings of the co-operating libraries and by 
serving as a central clearing house for locating 
books anywhere in the United States. The union 
catalog is the principal source of information for 
interlibrary loans. 

No change has been made in the organiza¬ 
tion of the division; but under appropriations 
made available by Congress the staff has been 
greatly expanded for the purpose of carrying 
forward one-year, two-year, and five-year 
projects of the expansion of the catalog. The 
normal staff of fourteen members was increased 
for the year 1943-44 to thirty-nine. The division 
is administered by a chief, with a secretary, and 
an assistant chief. 

The binding office serves as the clearing 
house for all materials bound after receipt for 
addition to the collections. It maintains and 
clears records of all material routed to the 
bindery by custodial divisions, itself preparing 
most of the unbound monographs. It has final 
responsibility for reviewing all materials pre¬ 
pared for binding and particularly for making 
arrangement of materials accord with the 
catalog records. 

The office has a staff of seven members and is 
administered by the binding officer and an 
assistant binding officer. 

The department office of the processing 
department serves as the co-ordinating unit of 
the department for personnel, budgetary, pro¬ 
duction, and cost-accounting records (except 
that cost accounting for card distribution is 
performed in the secretary’s office of the card 
division) and supplies information about books 
in process. The office is under the immediate 
supervision of an administrative assistant to 
the director, with a staff of seven assistants. 

The procedures involved in the preparation 
of books for the collections, from the prepa¬ 
ration of preliminary cards through the filing of 
printed cards in the catalogs and the labeling 
of books for the shelves, are procedures which 
require close co-ordination. The primary pur¬ 
pose of the department organization is to pro¬ 


vide this co-ordination, together with the 
direction necessary to efficient operation, the 
responsibility for which rests with the director. 
He is assisted by an assistant director, a tech¬ 
nical assistant, and a secretary. The technical 
assistant conducts and directs research on the 
technical problems of the department. To aid 
him and to assist the director and the Librarian 
in estimating the department’s work and its 
needs, statistical data are being accumulated 
as rapidly as possible. Cost-accounting pro¬ 
cedures, established with the aid of the general 
accounting office, have been in operation for 
card distribution for about two years. As a 
result of these accounting records, the Library 
is enabled to conduct its card sales on a more 
business-like basis and to determine card 
prices which are equitable both to subscribing 
libraries and to the government of the United 
States. Until recently, however, the Library 
has not had precise knowledge of the cost of its 
other processing operations. Again with the aid 
of the general accounting office, a continuing 
system of work records and cost accounting has 
been set up for the descriptive and subject 
cataloging divisions and will be extended 
shortly throughout all operations of the de¬ 
partment. It is anticipated that a report of the 
system will be made available when possible 
to other libraries. 

THE ACQUISITIONS DEPARTMENT 

Although the creation of a separate 
Acquisitions Department came late in 
the process of reorganization, considera¬ 
tion of the problem came early. It came, 
in fact, at the beginning. My first general 
order, as I have noted above, was issued 
to learn what the Library’s book-selec¬ 
tion practices were; and the committee 
on acquisitions policy, which was to re¬ 
port on the entire problem, was ap¬ 
pointed a month after I took office. 
There has never been a time in the past 
five years when the question of acquisi¬ 
tions was not under consideration in its 
policy or its administrative aspects. It is 
still under study today; and, without 
doubt, it always will be. There is no final 
answer to the question of what books the 
Library of Congress should secure, nor is 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


J 7 


there any final answer to the question of 
how best to secure them. All we have 
done—all we have tried to do—has been 
to hammer out working answers which 
provide a basis for present operations. 
Our “Canons of Selection” are certainly 
not eternal statements of objectives, but 
at least they are statements of objectives 
which will stand; which will shape and 
orient our acquisitions programs until 
better statements take their place. And 
our acquisitions procedures, though they 
are far from perfect, are at least stated 
procedures which take into account the 
various elements of the administrative 
problem as we know those elements. 

The Library of Congress, in other 
words, has not learned in the last five 
years how the collections of a national 
library can be made and kept as com¬ 
plete as they ought to be. It has not even 
learned how complete the collections of 
a national library, in a nation of other 
great libraries, ought to be. But it has 
faced both questions. It has tried to find 
answers. And—what is more impor¬ 
tant—it has tried to find those answers 
for itself. The Library of Congress no 
longer waits for dealers to offer books, 
or for collectors to give them, or for 
publishers to deposit them for copyright. 
The Library of Congress now takes ac¬ 
tive and affirmative steps of its own, and 
on its own account, to find out what it 
lacks and to secure what it needs. Re¬ 
organization of our acquisitions activi¬ 
ties, whatever else it means or does not 
mean, means that. 

And it began on that issue. The ques¬ 
tions submitted to the committee on ac¬ 
quisitions policy 2 in November, 1939, 

2 The members of the committee were: Dr. Sious- 
sat, chief of the division of manuscripts, chairman; 
Dr. Bentley, consultant in philosophy; Mr. Childs, 
chief of the division of documents; Dr. Clark, 
consultant in economics; Dr. Hanke, director of the 
Hispanic foundation; Mr. Mearns, superintendent 


were these: (1) whether the Library of 
Congress should attempt to formulate a 
policy of accessions based upon a knowl¬ 
edge of present deficiencies and a plan 
for their correction by purchase or 
whether it should depend upon offers of 
sale of collections, offers from the book 
trade, from collectors, and from donors, 
etc.; (2) whether a policy of accessions 
should be based upon the assumption 
that the Library of Congress should be as 
nearly complete as possible, or upon the 
assumption that it should specialize in 
fields where it is now strong, leaving 
other fields to other libraries, or upon the 
assumption that the Library should be 
“well rounded”; (3) whether the opera¬ 
tion of a plan of acquisitions should be 
directed by the accessions division; 
whether the accessions division or the 
division of bibliography or some other 
officer or unit should formulate a want- 
list; and whether such a list should be 
made the basis of standing orders. 

The committee’s report, filed on De¬ 
cember 19, 1939, found, as I have noted 
above, that under the then existing prac¬ 
tice of the Library of Congress no provi¬ 
sion was made for initiating orders in 
fifteen of forty important subject fields 
and that inadequate provision was made 
in thirteen others, leaving only twelve 
which received “relatively adequate at¬ 
tention.” To correct this situation the 
committee recommended: 

1. The creation of a centralized agency in 
the Library for the co-ordination of all requests 
and recommendations for purchase, through 
the establishment of an acquisitions office 
under a director who would be advised by staff 
members broadly informed of the needs of the 
Library’s collections; 


of the reading rooms; Mr. Vance, law librarian; 
Dr. Zahm, chief of the division of aeronautics; Miss 
Dennis, assistant chief of the division of accessions; 
and Miss Heilman, chief of the division of bibliog¬ 
raphy. 



i8 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


2. A flexible book budget whereby a mini¬ 
mum sum might be counted upon for purchases 
in each field of acquisitions; 

3. Stricter enforcement of the copyright 
act to insure deposits of copyrighted books; 

4. The designation of agents of the Library 
in foreign countries to insure the procurement 
of essential foreign books; 

5. An increase in the number of consultants 
and other advisers in special subject fields; 

6. Closer co-operation between the Library 
and the academic and learned world, e.g., through 
the establishment of joint committees repre¬ 
senting the learned societies and the staff of 
the Library and through the establishment of 
fellowships for scholars whose work might be 
directed in the interest of the Library; and 

7. The institution of surveys of those parts 
of the Library’s collections which had been 
neglected because no separate divisions or 
special consultants had been assigned to super¬ 
vise their custody or growth. 

On the policy question of “complete¬ 
ness” of the collections the committee 
concluded that “completeness” was de¬ 
sirable in the following fields: (1) law and 
government, including governmental 
publications, (2) the civilization of the 
Americas, and other fields which may be 
described as national interests; and (3) 
all that contributes to information about 
books, with respect to the Library’s cata¬ 
logs and to bibliography in the widest 
significance of that term. 

As regards the relation of the acquisi¬ 
tions policy of the Library of Congress 
to the acquisitions policies of other li¬ 
braries—federal and nonfederal—the 
committee reported: first, that the Li¬ 
brary might well rely on the Army Medi¬ 
cal Library and the library of the De¬ 
partment of Agriculture to cover their 
respective fields, aiding them in building 
up their collections rather than attempt¬ 
ing to duplicate those collections; second, 
that the Library could not safely rely on 
the collections of other federal libraries to 
cover special fields; third, that the Li¬ 


brary should not attempt to build up col¬ 
lections in special fields in which it was 
not strong and in which other libraries 
in the United States were known to be 
strong; fourth, that the Library should, 
however, maintain strong collections of 
its own in a condition of strength re¬ 
gardless of holdings elsewhere; fifth, that 
gifts of distinguished special collections 
should not be refused regardless of hold¬ 
ings elsewhere; and, sixth, that the Li¬ 
brary of Congress should recognize a 
special duty to secure foreign materials 
not readily available to smaller libraries. 

In terms of appropriations for in¬ 
crease of the collections, this meant, in 
the committee’s opinion, $500,000 a year 
for Increase General instead of the then 
appropriation of $118,000. The commit¬ 
tee estimated that it would cost $200,000 
a year to buy important foreign publica¬ 
tions in the fields of the Library’s inter¬ 
est. The balance was thought necessary 
for the purchase of noncopyrighted 
American materials, extra copies, and 
older materials of all origins. 

Since the Library was falling behind 
at the estimated rate of thirty thousand 
volumes a year in processing the materi¬ 
als secured under its $118,000 appropria¬ 
tion for increase, I did not feel justified 
in accepting the committee’s figures; 
nor did I think it would be possible, in 
view of the outbreak of war, to buy 
$200,000 worth of books a year in 
Europe. We did, however, request in 
our supplemental estimates for the 
fiscal year 1941 an added $100,000 
for Orientalia, an added $75,000 for His¬ 
panic material, and $100,000 for pur¬ 
chases and photocopying in Europe. 
Thirty thousand dollars of this estimate 
was granted,, raising the appropriation 
for Increase General to $148,000. But 
our efforts to provide for the “orphan” 
subject fields were, as I have noted, un- 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


!9 


successful. The subcommittee on the 
legislative bill was sympathetic but firm. 

Unlike the processing problem, the ac¬ 
quisitions problem had to be attacked 
without new positions beyond those 
made available in the accessions division 
for purchase routines. The attack to be 
made was, however, clear. The Librari¬ 
an’s Committee reinforced the findings 
and conclusions of the committee on ac¬ 
quisitions policy on most points and em¬ 
phasized the need for action. Its recom¬ 
mendations were: 

1. That the reference services of the Library 
be united in a Reference Department, with an 
assistant librarian in charge; and that this 
assistant librarian, in addition to having re¬ 
sponsibility for directing, supervising, and 
co-ordinating the work of the reference service 
divisions, be also the principal book-selection 
officer, with responsibility for controlling and 
co-ordinating the book-selection work of the 
Library. “Book selection,” said the committee, 
“is a joint process, participated in by chiefs 
of divisions and others; but final decisions are 
made by the Assistant Librarian, and all sug¬ 
gestions for purchase are referred to him.” 

2. That a systematic book budget, under 
the control of the assistant librarian in charge of 
the Reference Department, be set up, with 
quotas for the various divisions and careful 
consideration of the proper distribution of 
funds among the various fields of knowledge. 

3. That the accessions division serve not as a 
book-selection agency but as a purchasing and 
receiving agency for all materials acquired by 
the Library and as the agency to execute orders 
received from the book-selection officers; and 
that it assume responsibility for maintaining 
in a central serial record a consolidated ac¬ 
count of all serials received by the Library, the 
recording of which was currently maintained, 
so far as it was maintained at all, in a number 
of divisions. 

4. That the assistant librarian in charge of 
reference, or his delegate, or delegates of the 
assistant librarians in charge of reference and 
processing, select material for the collections 
from current copyright receipts. 

5. That the Library initiate a vigorous 
policy of encouraging gifts; that the gift sec¬ 
tion of the accessions division be enlarged; but 


that the Library feel free to reject inappropriate 
gifts. 

6. That possibilities be explored for co¬ 
ordinating the activities of the Library with 
those of other federal libraries in the District 
of Columbia with a view to making substantial 
savings through the elimination of duplication 
of collections. A federal library council for this 
and similar purposes was recommended. 

Partly for reasons of logic and partly 
for practical reasons, we began not with 
the specific recommendations of the Li¬ 
brarian’s Committee but with the under¬ 
lying question of policy. The practical 
reasons related to the reclassification of 
Library positions by the Civil Serv¬ 
ice Commission. Commissioner Arthur 
Flemming, to whose warm interest and 
humane intelligence the Library of Con¬ 
gress owes a debt I am proud to acknowl¬ 
edge, had suggested that a consideration 
of the Library’s objectives by the Li¬ 
brary’s staff would be helpful not only to 
the commission’s investigators but to the 
Library itself. Meetings were, therefore, 
held with the Library’s principal officers 
in the summer of 1940, and the Library’s 
functions and objectives were discussed. 
They were not, I should note, the most 
successful meetings I can recall. One or 
two of the more articulate of my elder 
colleagues approached the discussion in 
the spirit of the senior benches at a facul¬ 
ty meeting: change was undesirable and 
any discussion which might lead to 
change was in doubtful taste. The Li¬ 
brary of Congress was too big and too 
old—above all, too old—to ask itself 
what it was doing and why and for what 
purpose. 

Once faced, however, the seriousness 
and urgency of the central question de¬ 
manded an honest and serious answer, 
and drafts of objectives for the Library’s 
service and for the selection of its mate¬ 
rials were prepared and circulated and 
finally approved. These “Canons of Se- 


20 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


lection” define the Library’s objectives 
with reference to three categories of 
users: first, Members of the Congress; 
second, officers of the federal government 
and the staffs of the various government 
departments and agencies, including the 
Supreme Court and its bar; and, third, 
the general public. Because it is impossi¬ 
ble for the Library of Congress to “col¬ 
lect everything,” selection of material 
must be made on the basis of the anti¬ 
cipated needs of these three classes of 
users in the order given. The “Canons of 
Selection”apply to the Library’s acquisi¬ 
tion of material by purchase, but not to 
its acquisition by gift or by deposit for 
copyright. Their text follows: 

1. The Library of Congress should possess in 
some useful form all bibliothecal materials neces¬ 
sary to the Congress and to the officers of govern¬ 
ment of the United States in the performance of 
their duties. 

To this Canon only one exception is made. A 
large number of special libraries have been es¬ 
tablished in the various departments, bureaus, 
and offices of government as, for example, the 
Department of Agriculture, the Office of the 
Surgeon General of the Army, etc. Where the 
collections of these libraries adequately cover 
particular fields in which the Library of Con¬ 
gress is not strong, the Library of Congress 
will not purchase extensively in these fields but 
will limit itself to the principal reference works, 
using its best efforts to strengthen the collec¬ 
tions already established elsewhere. Where, 
however, the collections of the Library are al¬ 
ready exceptionally strong they will be main¬ 
tained regardless of holdings in other libraries. 
The Reference Department of the Library of 
Congress will make it its business to know the 
extent of the collections of these special libraries 
and will establish, with the librarians in charge, 
machinery for cooperation both in the mainte¬ 
nance of these collections and in their use. 

2. The Library of Congress should possess all 
books and other materials (•whether in original or 
copy) which express and record the life and 
achievements of the people of the United States. 

To this Canon there is one obvious exception. 
Where official records of the Federal Govern¬ 
ment are deposited in the National Archives the 


Library will secure only such copies as are 
necessary for the convenience of its readers. 
It will, however, attempt to secure all printed 
documents, federal, state, and municipal. 

Again the Library’s principal concern here 
is with national rather than local records, and 
though it recognizes that many so-called local 
records are, or may become, of national signifi¬ 
cance (as, for example, local histories of which it 
has a distinguished collection) the emphasis of 
its effort is upon records of national interest, 
and its primary concern as regards local manu¬ 
script records is to stimulate their collection in 
appropriate localities. 

3. The Library of Congress should possess, 
in some useful form, the material parts of the 
records of other societies, past and present, and 
should accumulate, in original or in copy, full and 
representative collections of the written records of 
those societies and peoples whose experience is of 
most immediate concern to the people of the United 
States. 

Two exceptions to the third Canon should 
be noted. First, the Library of Congress as the 
central United States depository for the publica¬ 
tions of all foreign governments will attempt 
to secure all the official publications of all 
governments of the world. Second, where, 
aside from such official documents, other 
American libraries, whose collections are made 
broadly available, have already accumulated, 
or are in process of accumulating, outstanding 
collections in well-defined areas, in which areas 
the Library of Congress is not strong, the Li¬ 
brary of Congress will satisfy itself with general 
reference materials and will not attempt to 
establish intensive collections. 

The “Canons of Selection” provided 
the outlines of a basic policy of book se¬ 
lection. Their application in practice, 
however, presented problems. Since new 
appropriations for this purpose had not 
been voted, we were obliged to do what 
we could with the means available. Con¬ 
sequently, provision was made in the es¬ 
tablishment of the new Reference De¬ 
partment in June, 1940, for the centrali¬ 
zation there of book-selection responsi¬ 
bilities; and, in particular, responsibility 
for the approval of books for purchase 
devolved upon the reference librarian 
who was then Mr. David C. Mearns. 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


21 


A first step was the preparation of 
a schedule of allotments, by subject 
fields, from the appropriation for the 
increase of the collections. Sums in vary¬ 
ing amounts were set aside for the devel¬ 
opment of each class of material, the 
sum allotted being determined by con¬ 
siderations of known deficiencies in the 
collections, expected acquisitions from 
sources other than purchase, the extent 
of literary production in the field, and 
the relative importance of the subject 
to the Library in accordance with the 
“Canons of Selection.” This schedule of 
allotments covered all subjects in which 
the Library was interested except law. 
The appropriations for the increase of 
the Law Library and for books for the 
Supreme Court were left, for the time 
being, to be expended by the law librari¬ 
an and the marshal of the Supreme 
Court, under the direction of the chief 
justice. 

Allotments having been set up, it be¬ 
came necessary to find recommending 
officers for each field. This was done in 
part with the aid of a grant from the 
Carnegie Corporation for the establish¬ 
ment of fellowships in the Library of 
Congress and in part by the appointment 
of associate fellows from the Library 
staff and from other government depart¬ 
ments. The Carnegie grant, now un¬ 
fortunately discontinued by the corpora¬ 
tion, was, in my opinion, one of the most 
hopeful and helpful efforts thus far made 
to bridge the gulf between libraries and 
the scholars who use them. The purpose 
was to prepare a certain number of young 
scholars every year to make scholarship 
serviceable to libraries in order that li¬ 
braries might be as serviceable as they 
should be to scholarship. The corpora¬ 
tion, as Mr. Keppel stated in announcing 
the grant, acted from a conviction “that 
American cultural institutions can be 


greatly strengthened if scholars will ac¬ 
cept a responsibility for the holdings of 
the national library and if the national 
library will accept a responsibility for 
the instruction of scholars in the services 
it is prepared to render.” I cannot too 
strongly emphasize my conviction that 
the withdrawal of the Carnegie grant at 
a time when the Library’s fellowships 
had clearly demonstrated their useful¬ 
ness, not only to the Library of Congress 
but to national scholarship, was a tragic 
loss to both. 

The first five fellows of the Library of 
Congress and their fields were: Dr. Rich¬ 
ard H. Heindel, University of Pennsyl¬ 
vania (modern European history); Dr. 
Edward P. Hutchinson, Harvard Uni¬ 
versity (population); Dr. Jerrold Orne, 
University of Minnesota (romance lan¬ 
guages and library science); Dr. Wil¬ 
liam E. Powers, Northwestern Univer¬ 
sity (geology); and Mr. Francis J. Whit¬ 
field, Harvard University (Slavic lan¬ 
guages and literatures). During the aca¬ 
demic year 1941-42 the fellows included: 
Dr. Byron A. Soule (chemistry), Mr. 
Manuel Sanchez (technology), Dr.. Wal¬ 
do Chamberlin (naval history), and 
Dr. Benjamin A. Botkin (folklore); dur¬ 
ing the academic year 1942-43: Dr. 
E. Franklin Frazier (American Negro 
studies) and Dr. Sidney Kramer (war 
bibliography). The present holders of 
fellowships are: Dr. Edward Meade 
Earle (military science), Dr. Walter 
Livingston Wright, Jr. (Near Eastern 
studies), Katherine Anne Porter (re¬ 
gional American literature), and Dr. 
John Kozak (Czechoslovakian studies). 
The fellowship of Mr. John Peale Bishop 
(comparative literature) was interrupted 
by his ill health, which has since tragi¬ 
cally terminated in his death. 

By the summer of 1942 these various 
changes in acquisitions policy and prac- 


22 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


tice had shaken down to such a point 
that a definitive statement could issue. 
General Order No. 1151, of August 25, 
1942, strengthened the control exercised 
by the reference librarian over the selec¬ 
tion of materials, extending it to acquisi¬ 
tions by every means—gift, deposit, and 
exchange, as well as purchase. Expendi¬ 
tures from the appropriations for the law 
collections were alone excepted. The 
commission for the selection of copy¬ 
right deposits was abolished, its duties 
being shared by the reference librarian 
and the director of the Processing De¬ 
partment. These officers were also to 
examine and select materials from re¬ 
ceipts by gift, transfer, and exchange. 
The responsibility of the accessions di¬ 
vision was also clarified: the division was 
to be the sole office of record for incom¬ 
ing materials. 

But, if the organization and proce¬ 
dures were clear, they were far from sat¬ 
isfactory. The reference librarian could 
not act as the principal book-selecting 
officer of the Library without injury to 
his work as reference librarian—and 
vice versa. Moreover, the lack of ad¬ 
ministrative connection between book 
selection (in the Reference Department) 
and book buying (in the Processing De¬ 
partment) was a weakness which became 
daily more obvious. The result was the 
decision, debated through the winter of 
1942-43 and finally taken in the summer 
of 1943 (June 30), to remove final re¬ 
sponsibility for book selection from the 
Reference Department and to put it in 
the hands of an officer responsible for 
acquiring the material selected. This 
meant a new Acquisitions Department, 
which was set up by General Order No. 
1188. 

In effect, this order centers in the new 
department all acquisition activities. 
Recommending officers, though they 


may perform duties in other depart¬ 
ments—usually the Reference Depart¬ 
ment—report, in their work of recom¬ 
mendation, to the director of the Acqui¬ 
sitions Department; and all receiving 
and accessioning work is done in the de¬ 
partment’s divisions. The accessions 
division was transferred to the new de¬ 
partment from the Processing Depart¬ 
ment. The functions of the old docu¬ 
ments division with respect to the acqui¬ 
sitions of government documents were 
transferred to the exchange and gift 
division. (Accessioning functions had 
previously been transferred from the 
documents division to the accessions 
division.) Selection of material from 
unsolicited receipts (copyright deposits, 
gifts, and exchanges) was centered in the 
department, as was allotment of pur¬ 
chase funds, Law as well as General. 
Purchase and accession searching, for¬ 
merly functions of the catalog prepara¬ 
tion and maintenance division, were 
transferred to the order and to the ex¬ 
change and gift divisions, respectively. 
In addition, the serial record was trans¬ 
ferred from the Processing Department 
and set up as a division. 

Altogether, the new department is 
made up of a director and his office 
(eleven employees), two assistant direc¬ 
tors for planning and operations, and 
three divisions—order, exchange and 
gift, and serial record—the work of which 
is described by the director, Mr. Clapp, 
as follows: 

The order division (thirty-one employees) 
has sole responsibility for acquisitions where 
the expenditure of money is involved, for pur¬ 
chase searching, and for pricing. The exchange 
and gift division (twenty-eight employees) is 
responsible for the acquisition of material by 
gift, exchange (including the international 
exchange of government publications under the 
Brussels Convention and other treaty engage¬ 
ments), various provisions of law, and official 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


2 3 


donation, and for the recording of conditional 
deposits and intramural transfers of materials. 
This division is responsible also for bookplating 
and marking of material received bound, for 
accession searching, and for the preparation and 
issuance of the Monthly Check List of State 
Publications. To the serial record division 
(nineteen employees) are sent all serials from 
whatever source (except nongovernmental 
daily newspapers) for accessioning record. 
Besides this original accession record, however, 
the serial record maintains the basic and perma¬ 
nent record of the Library’s holdings of serials, 
bound and unbound, processed and unproc¬ 
essed; it enters cataloging and classification 
indicia into bound volumes, and its records 
have displaced the shelflist entries for this type 
of material; it keeps the control record of de¬ 
cisions affecting the selection, retention, dis¬ 
tribution, and processing of serial publications 
throughout the Library. 

The establishment of the new depart¬ 
ment coincided with the adoption of a 
new method of reporting important ac¬ 
quisitions. Prior to 1940 important new 
acquisitions were listed in the ahnual 
report in the chapters then written by 
the chiefs of the various special divisions. 
The result was, first, that materials not 
the responsibility of any particular spe¬ 
cial division were frequently overlooked; 
second, that materials were announced 
many months, and often as much as a 
year, after acquisition. But, in any case, 
the Annual Report of the Librarian of 
Congress was not, and should not be, a 
book-lover’s intelligencer. It has too 
many statistics to report and too many 
personnel changes to list. We therefore 
decided in the summer of 1943 to report 
on new acquisitions in a supplement to 
the annual report which would be pub¬ 
lished quarterly. The public printer ap¬ 
proved the plan as easing somewhat the 
autumnal strain on his presses. Allen 
Tate, our distinguished consultant in 
English poetry, agreed to take on the 
editorial task; and the first issue of the 
Library of Congress Quarterly Journal of 


Current Acquisitions appeared in No¬ 
vember, 1943. Its reception has con¬ 
vinced us that a publication such as we 
had in mind and Mr. Tate has realized 
can serve American scholarship. 

THE REEERENCE DEPARTMENT 

The creation of the Reference Depart¬ 
ment differed from the creation of the 
Acquisitions Department and the Proc¬ 
essing Department in that the Acquisi¬ 
tions and Processing departments were 
constructed by affirmative action where¬ 
as the Reference Department evolved. 
There was, it is true, a general order (No. 
964, of June 29, 1940) at the beginning 
of the history of the Reference Depart¬ 
ment; but it did little more than pile up 
some twenty heterogeneous divisions, 
accumulated by the Library over the 
course of haphazard time, and direct the 
then director of the legislative reference 
service, Dr. Evans, and the then super¬ 
intendent of the reading rooms, Mr. 
Mearns, to make a department of them. 
The functions to be performed by the 
new department were, it is true, named: 
reference, book selection, book service, 
and the care and custody of books on the 
shelves. The divisions were named also. 
They were the reading rooms division 
(the main reading room, the annex read¬ 
ing rooms, the study room service, the 
social sciences reference room, the local 
history and genealogy reading room, the 
reading room for the blind, and a pro¬ 
posed science and technology reading 
room), the documents division, the legis¬ 
lative reference service, the periodicals 
division, the rare book collection, the 
manuscripts division, the Orientalia di¬ 
vision, the Semitic division, the Slavic 
division, the Smithsonian division, the 
aeronautics division, the project books 
for the adult blind, the Hispanic founda¬ 
tion, the fine arts division, the music 


24 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


division, the maps division, the union 
catalog, the photoduplication service, 
the consultants, and “any consultant 
services or scholarly services which 
might be set up, such as the projected 
fellowships of the Library of Congress.” 

Messrs. Evans and Mearns were told, 
moreover, what results they were ex¬ 
pected to accomplish. In reader service 
and the care and custody of books they 
were to centralize the Library’s opera¬ 
tions, permitting only such exceptions 
as they could not avoid. To help them, 
in this labor they were given two new 
officers: a keeper of the collections, 
charged with responsibility for the physi¬ 
cal custody, security, and preservation 
of the Library’s collections (Alvin W. 
Kremer) and a chief of the book service 
(Robert C. Gooch). 

In reference work and book service 
they were told that the new department 
should: (i) assign responsibility for 
reference work and book selecting in the 
various fields of knowledge to those offi¬ 
cers of the Library and members of the 
Library staff having competence in the 
particular fields. (In fields in which no 
officer possessed particular competence, 
interested members of the staff were to 
be encouraged to participate in the work 
of selection and reference); (2) estab¬ 
lish a system of routing of reference prob¬ 
lems to the persons to whom responsi¬ 
bility for the various fields had been 
assigned; (3) establish a system for the 
initiation of recommendations of book 
purchases by the members of the Library 
staff responsible for the various fields of 
knowledge; (4) assure the systematic 
examination of publications, book re¬ 
views, and special articles in the various 
fields, with a view to the prompt origina¬ 
tion of recommendations for purchase of 
new books in these fields: and (5) provide 
means by which the collections might be 


analyzed with a view to building want- 
lists and developing a rational and af¬ 
firmative policy of book acquisition. 

But beyond these sailing directions 
and this small crew they were given very 
little help by the Librarian. What had 
happened in effect was that all units 
of the Library not engaged in process¬ 
ing work (Processing Department), in 
housekeeping functions (Administrative 
Department), in copyright work, or in 
law were set off together and called a 
department. The excessive “span of con¬ 
trol” which had made the Librarian’s 
life burdensome was transferred in large 
part to the new “director”—who, more¬ 
over, did not exist, since the position re¬ 
quested had not been granted by Con¬ 
gress. Moreover, one of the divisions 
transferred was the vast (for the Library 
of Congress) and sprawling (for any 
library) reading rooms division, which 
combined in one organ-within-the-organ- 
ism such disparate functions as book 
service, book custody, circulation within 
and without the Library, and reference 
work both high and low. 

It is not remarkable that the Refer¬ 
ence Department which resulted was a 
department in name only and that its 
substantial creation was obliged to wait 
for almost four years. Dr. Evans and 
Mr. Mearns struggled manfully. The 
chief assistant librarianship, with Dr. 
Evans in it, was thrown into the hopper. 
The position of reference librarian, with 
Mr. Mearns in occupancy, was added as 
a second in command—but with book 
selection to handle as well. The keeper 
of the collections and the chief of the 
book service labored endless hours. The 
large, diffused, and various staff per¬ 
formed its large, diffused, and various 
duties. But, though much of the greatest 
importance was accomplished, a depart¬ 
ment, conscious of itself as a department 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


25 


and working functionally as a depart¬ 
ment, was not evolved. General refer¬ 
ence policies were imposed upon the 
heterogeneous divisions making up the 
department, and reference reports were 
brought into conformity with those 
policies. Administrative channels which 
had not previously existed were estab¬ 
lished and administrative relationships 
set up. But, because the new department 
did not reflect function in its organiza¬ 
tion, a functional organism was not 
created; and it soon became apparent 
that nothing but a complete reconsidera¬ 
tion and a new start would be effective. 

Whether or not the new start could 
have been made sooner than it was is 
extremely doubtful. For one thing, the 
solution of the processing tangle de¬ 
manded and received priority of treat¬ 
ment not only in the appropriations 
committee but in the minds of the Li¬ 
brary administration. The situation dis¬ 
covered there was manifestly dangerous 
and could not be allowed to continue. A 
second circumstance operating to delay 
a thoroughgoing reorganization of the 
Reference Department was the war. I 
have not wished to emphasize the fact 
in this report, but readers will have 
noticed that the entire reorganization of 
which I am writing took place after the 
outbreak of the war in Europe, and most 
of it during our participation in the war. 
The effect of the war on the Library was 
the effect familiar elsewhere: manpow¬ 
er was lacking, and service demands, 
though they decreased in number, in¬ 
creased in difficulty. Moreover, the 
Librarian was drafted for other services 
for better, than a year and from time to 
time thereafter. Whether my absence 
as director of O.F.F., as assistant di¬ 
rector of O.W.I., and as organizer of 
O.W.I.’s London branch was an ad¬ 
vantage or a disadvantage to the Li¬ 


brary of Congress in its general opera¬ 
tions may well be a matter for debate. 
In terms of the Library’s reorganization, 
granted that reorganization was neces¬ 
sary, it could only be a retarding factor, 
since reorganization was necessarily my 
responsibility and could not go on with¬ 
out me. 

These, however, are excuses. They do 
not dispose of the fact that the real re¬ 
organization of the Library’s vital refer¬ 
ence services was delayed to the winter 
of 1943-44 and General Order No. 1218 
of March 25, 1944. Prior to that date, 
however—in the fall of 1940, to be exact 
—the “Canons of Service” had been 
worked out in Library conferences, with 
the result that the reorganization, when 
it came, had a philosophy to go on. Since 
the philosophy of library service is some¬ 
what less clear than Kant, it may be 
worth while to brief the reasoning by 
which we arrived at our conclusions. 

At the beginning of our discussion two 
views were advanced—or perhaps it 
would be fairer to say that participants 
in the discussion were urgently invited 
to have views with reference to two op¬ 
posed positions: one, that a library is a 
kind of machine to drop a book into a 
reader’s hand, the machine having no 
further responsibility or, indeed, inter¬ 
est—except to get the book back; the 
other, that a library is a group of human 
beings who accept a responsibility to 
make any part of the printed record 
available to society, by whatever means 
is most intelligible and most effective, 
the responsibility ending not with the 
mechanical delivery of a book but with 
the identification and production of the 
text or the information needed. 

As between these two positions, there 
seemed, at first, to be unanimous agree¬ 
ment on the part of my associates that 
the second was the more nearly correct. 


26 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


Indeed, some of them went so far as to 
suggest that the first definition was the 
old definition of a library and that the 
second was the more modern. But there 
was no disagreement that the second was 
applicable to the Library of Congress. 

Proceeding from this point, an at¬ 
tempt was made to discover what the 
precise obligations of a library of the 
second category were: particularly, what 
was meant by the statement that a li¬ 
brary accepts a responsibility to “make 
available” pertinent parts of the total 
record. As an extreme position, it was 
suggested that a library, such as the Li¬ 
brary of Congress, might accept an ob¬ 
ligation to publish by radio, by print, 
by near-print, or by other means, those 
materials, of fact and of opinion, which, 
in its best judgment, bore upon the con¬ 
troversial issues which a democratic 
nation faces. Would it be possible for 
the Library of Congress to publish ma¬ 
terial of this kind in a form useful to the 
electorate? It was generally agreed that 
such a program would require an amount 
of time and a number of advisers beyond 
the capacities of the Library. 

A more moderate conception of li¬ 
brary responsibility was next discussed. 
It was suggested that the Library of 
Congress might fulfil its obligations by 
preparing annotated bibliographies and 
other briefs of the record for publication 
in newspapers or by other agencies wish¬ 
ing to use them—the Library of Congress 
accepting responsibility for its selection 
of authorities and for its presentation of 
the historical record. It was pointed out 
that the Library has a duty always to 
present both sides of controversial prob¬ 
lems. 

Here there seemed to be a keen sense 
of the difficulties involved, and retreat 
was suggested to a still more moderate 
position—the position ascribed to an¬ 


other great national library—i.e., a limi¬ 
tation of the responsibility of the Library 
to the assistance of accredited and quali¬ 
fied scholars who might work in the Li¬ 
brary for scholarly purposes. As to this, 
however, there was general agreement 
that the Library of Congress could not 
fulfil its responsibility in so narrow a 
manner. First, it was pointed out that 
the Library would be limiting its refer¬ 
ence assistance to those who need such 
assistance least. Second, it was pointed 
out that such assistance to scholars in 
the production of scholarly works to be 
read by other scholars would not result 
in the publication of the essential record 
to the people at the time when the people 
most had need of it. 

At this point it became necessary to 
review our first decision as to the two 
concepts of a library. A medial position 
was suggested: that the principal re¬ 
sponsibility of a library is to deliver a 
book into the hands of the man who asks 
for it but, at the same time, to under¬ 
take what were referred to as “extra¬ 
curricular” services to certain types of 
readers, chosen on some basis not de¬ 
fined. As to this, it was replied that there 
might be a considerable difference be¬ 
tween the notion that a library’s respon¬ 
sibilities end with the delivery of books, 
reference services being “extra-curricu¬ 
lar” adjuncts, and the alternative notion 
that a library’s real and essential func¬ 
tion is the activity which is sometimes 
referred to as “reference work,” the 
serving-out of books being merely in¬ 
cidental to that function. 

Gradually the definition sharpened. 
It was recognized, as a matter of course, 
that the primary obligation of the Li¬ 
brary of Congress was owed to Congress 
and that its second obligation was the 
service of officers of government charged 
with the conduct of official business. The 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


27 


obligation to the nation as a whole, how¬ 
ever, proved more difficult to define. 

In an effort to resolve that problem 
and to define the areas of agreement, I 
tried my hand at a draft of “Canons of 
Service” which was circulated for com¬ 
ment on September n, 1940, and which 
we included, in corrected form, in the 
annual report for that fiscal year. The 
canons do not answer the dark and 
cloudy questions discussed during the 
summer—questions which wiser men 
with more time to devote will, I hope, 
consider at greater length. They do not 
define the word “library” in service 
terms. They helped, however, to orient 
the department which was to follow four 
years later, and they are therefore given 
in full: 

1. The Library of Congress undertakes for 
Members of the Congress any and all research and 
reference projects bearing upon the Library's col¬ 
lections and required by Members in connection 
with the performance of their legislative duties. 

There are no exceptions to this rule so far 
as the Library’s conception of its obligations 
is concerned. Only a lack of means to provide 
the necessary, and necessarily skilled, staff will 
justify a failure on the Library’s part to meet 
all such demands. 

2. The Library of Congress undertakes for 
officers and departments of government research 
projects, appropriate to the Library, which can be 
executed by reference to its collections, and which 
the staffs of offices and departments are unable to 
execute. 

These projects are deferred, except in case 
of emergency, to reference projects undertaken 
for Members of the Congress. 

The rules establishing the Library’s refer¬ 
ence and research obligations to Members of the 
Congress and officers of government suggest, 
in turn, its reference obligations to other li¬ 
braries and to the public in general. As in the 
case of its collections, the reference facilities of 
the Library are facilities created for the use of 
Members of the Congress, etc., as representa¬ 
tives of the people and are therefore the facili¬ 
ties of the people. For this reason, but subject 
to the priorities established by the greater 
urgency of the research needs of Members of 


the Congress and officers of government, the 
reference facilities of the Library are available, 
within appropriate limitations, to members of 
the public acting either through universities 
or learned societies or other libraries or directly. 
The “pool of scholarship” which the Library of 
Congress is obliged to maintain in order to 
perform its obligations to the Congress and to 
the government is, in other words, as much the 
property of the people as its collection of books. 
These facts determine the third rule defining 
the reference objectives of the Library. 

3. The reference staff and facilities of the Li¬ 
brary of Congress are available to members of the 
public, universities, learned societies and other 
libraries requiring service which the Library staff 
is equipped to give and which can be given without 
interference with services to the Congress and 
other agencies of the Federal Government. 

This policy is active as well as passive. Pas¬ 
sively considered it means that reference in¬ 
quiries, and requests for bibliothecal service, 
which cannot be satisfied by other libraries or 
scholarly institutions nearer the inquirer, may 
be submitted to the Library of Congress which 
will respond to them within necessary limita¬ 
tions of time and labor. Actively considered, 
the Library’s policy in this regard means that 
the Library of Congress, as the reference library 
of the people, holds itself charged with a duty to 
provide information to the people with regard 
to the materials they possess in its collections, 
and with an obligation to make its technical 
and scholarly services as broadly useful to the 
people as it can. 

The reorganization of 1944 was car¬ 
ried forward on the basis of these canons. 
It was accomplished only after full dis¬ 
cussion and the greatest possible oppor¬ 
tunity for criticism and comment. Work 
began in the department in the fall of 
1943, and a preliminary outline was dis¬ 
tributed to the professional staff before 
the December 1, 1943, meeting of the 
professional forum. A series of discus¬ 
sions was also held with division chiefs, 
and the daily meetings of the Librarian’s 
Conference were devoted to the project 
from time to time over many months. 

Broadly speaking, the purpose in view 
was to take the department down and 


28 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


reconstruct it in terms of its principal 
functions: (i) custody, (2) circulation, 
and (3) reference, transferring its book- 
selection duties to the new Department 
of Acquisitions, which had been set up 
to receive them. This meant the dissolu¬ 
tion of the reading rooms division—a 
reform long overdue. It meant the unifi¬ 
cation of custodial responsibilities, pre¬ 
viously scattered among the reading 
rooms and the special divisions, and the 
reaffirmation of “the classic organiza¬ 
tion” of the collections which the general 
order defined as having been intended 
“to make available, in and through a 
single classified collection, all material 
which can be so organized and serviced, 
separate collections being maintained 
only when the nature of the material 
(e.g., manuscripts) or the character of 
the alphabet (e.g., Chinese) makes the 
maintenance of a separate collection un¬ 
avoidable.” It meant a custodial and 
delivery service, a loan service, and a 
reference service adapted not only to 
the various categories of reference de¬ 
mands (congressional and other) but to 
the realities of reference inquiries (in¬ 
formational and scholarly). 

The organization which resulted and 
its relation to the organization which 
went before can best be understood by 
comparing the pre-reorganization chart 
(II) with the post-reorganization chart 
(HI). 

Here, as in the case of the other de¬ 
partments, I shall let the director, Mr. 
Mearns, describe the organization and 
operation of his department in detail: 

The legislative reference service .—Only a brief 
account of the legislative reference service is 
necessary. The service existed prior to the 
March reorganization and did not undergo any 
drastic change at that time. Its internal re¬ 
sponsibilities and scope and its relationship to 
the other services were more carefully defined. 
It had been apparent that, previous to the re¬ 


organization, the legislative reference service 
was not a division of the Reference Depart¬ 
ment in the same sense as were, for example, 
the rare books division or the aeronautics 
division. The legislative reference service (sixty- 
eight employees) supplies an over-all refer¬ 
ence service to Members of Congress, with par¬ 
ticular emphasis on subjects related to pro¬ 
posed or pending legislation. In the reorganiza¬ 
tion this fact became decisive, and the legisla¬ 
tive reference service was set up as a service 
parallel with the public reference service. To 
be sure, the Library as a whole has compelling 
obligations to perform reference service for 
Members of Congress, but where such work is 
done elsewhere the legislative reference service 
co-ordinates it for congressional use. 

The legislative reference service retains 
charge of the congressional reading room and in 
so doing assembles, charges, and loans materials 
requested by Members of Congress or their 
families. It forwards such charges to the loan 
division, which has over-all responsibility for 
maintenance of records of loans. Under the re¬ 
organization the legislative reference service 
will continue to compile and publish indexes to 
federal and state laws, digests of public general 
bills, and basic data studies on matters of legis¬ 
lative concern. 

The circulation service .—From the standpoint 
of administrative units, the circulation service 
represents the most drastic departure from the 
previous organization. The custodial and cir¬ 
culation services jt performs were the scattered 
responsibility of the former reading rooms 
division, including the government publications 
reading room and many of the special divisions. 
The previous unintegrated divisional structure 
of the Reference Department and the relative 
autonomy of the divisions had resulted in unin¬ 
tegrated and unrelated collections. Books were 
issued and loaned from a dozen different di¬ 
visions, and there was no centralized responsi¬ 
bility for records of books in use within the 
Library or of outside loans. In terms of service 
to readers, this situation was reflected in a 
regrettably high percentage of failures to sup¬ 
ply desired books either from the central desk 
in the main reading room or from the special 
divisions; and the reverse side of this picture 
was an interference with reference service by the 
custodial responsibilities of the reading room 
and the special divisions. 

The separation of custodial and circulation 
responsibilities from reference duties does not 


CHART II 

Reference Department, Pre-reorganization 



CHART III 

Reference Department, Organization,^March, 1944 
























3 ° 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


imply any demeaning of the former. Rather, 
by providing a hierarchy of custodial positions 
and duties, it establishes custodianship as a 
definite professional function of librarianship. 
In their reaction against the tradition of Euro¬ 
pean librarianship, American libraries have 
tended to exalt their reference functions and 
undervalue their custodial functions. In this 
country the public library movement created 
and made self-conscious the profession of li¬ 
brarianship, and in great public libraries par¬ 
ticularly the problems of custody are apt to 
receive scant attention. But in the Library of 
Congress, and, no doubt, in other large re¬ 
search libraries with nation-wide demands on 
their resources, the custody and circulation of 
materials becomes a major operation. These 
materials include not only books in the millions 
but also more millions of periodicals, bound and 
unbound, pamphlets, manuscripts, prints, 
photographs, maps, sheet music, slides, etc. 
It is hoped that one of the products of the crea¬ 
tion of the circulation service will be a corps of 
professional curators, trained in the custody 
and administration of the Library’s collections. 

The circulation service is made up of three 
newly established divisions: the stack and reader 
division, the serials division, and the loan divi¬ 
sion. 

The stack and reader division (eighty em¬ 
ployees) issues and delivers material as re¬ 
quested for use in the general reading rooms, 
divisional reading rooms, and study rooms and 
for the official use of members of the staff in the 
divisional offices; it collects and reshelves such 
materials; and maintains records of materials 
in its custody and of materials issued and re¬ 
turned. It provides study rooms or other special 
research facilities in accordance with established 
policies and passes upon applications for the 
privilege of access to the book stacks. 

The division also has custody of the general 
classified collections and administers the cir¬ 
culation of materials from these collections to 
readers and investigators. It maintains, in 
accordance with standards of custodial care 
established by the keeper of the collections and 
approved by the Librarian, the physical and 
orderly arrangement of materials in the book 
stacks and in the reference collections in the 
general reading rooms, selecting deteriorated 
materials for rebinding and repair. A few col¬ 
lections remain in the custody of special divi¬ 
sions, but the trend is definitely and encourag¬ 
ingly toward centralization. Collections of books 


formerly in the custody of the aeronautics 
division, the maps division, the fine arts divi¬ 
sion, the Slavic division, and the Smithsonian 
division are now administered by the stack and 
reader division. Materials such as maps, prints 
and photographs, sound recordings, etc., which 
cannot conveniently be integrated with the 
general collections, by reason of their form, 
remain in the custody of the respective divisions 
concerned with them. 

Some idea of the scope of the operations of 
the stack and reader division may be obtained 
from the following statement concerning the 
transfer of positions and personnel. From the 
reading rooms division there were transferred 
to the stack and reader division the stack in¬ 
spectors, the stack attendants, the control 
room attendants, the book distributors, the 
guards and guides, the personnel of the study 
room reference service (with certain specified 
exceptions), the central charge file, the assist¬ 
ant in charge of document collections in the 
main reading room gallery, two clerks, and 
twelve messengers. The stack attendant former¬ 
ly in charge of the collections of the Smith¬ 
sonian division was also transferred to the stack 
and reader division. 

The serials division (forty-five employees) 
has custody of certain groups of materials which 
require, or for reasons of convenience are given, 
reader and reference service prior to their addi¬ 
tion to the general classified collections. In so 
far as their custody is not allocated to one of 
the several special divisions, the following 
groups are included: periodicals, newspapers, 
pamphlets, government documents, books in 
parts, and ephemera of various sorts. Such 
materials represent custodial, circulation, and 
reference problems in all libraries; but in the 
Library of Congress the problems are magni¬ 
fied by the sheer bulk of the material. With re¬ 
spect to such materials, the functional division 
as between custody and circulation, on the one 
hand, and reference service, on the other, has 
been deliberately set aside. The serials division 
maintains a reference service in special reading 
rooms with respect to periodicals, government 
documents, and newspapers in its custody; but 
this service is (with the specific exception of 
documents) subordinate to its custodial re¬ 
sponsibility, which constitutes its primary 
function. 

Because the preponderance of official docu¬ 
ments are serials and because their treatment 
and service as current publications are, to a 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


3 1 


large extent, comparable with the treatment 
and service of other kinds of periodicals, the 
government publications reading room, its 
collections, and its staff have been transferred 
from the reading rooms to the serials division. 

The loan division (fifty employees), as its 
name implies, administers all outside loans 
(including loans of books, periodicals, maps, 
music, prints, embossed books, sound record¬ 
ings, etc.). It should be noticed that the prin¬ 
ciple of centralization of administrative re¬ 
sponsibility has been carried further with re¬ 
spect to outside loans than with respect to the 
custody or issue of books within the Library. 
The Library of Congress is a national library, 
and officers of government, as well as scholars, 
confident of its resources, come to it or write to 
it for reference assistance. A book on loan is not 
available for use, and in wartime instant avail¬ 
ability assumes heightened importance. The 
practice of individual and interlibrary loan has 
advantages which justify the inconvenience it 
sometimes occasions, but this inconvenience 
should be minimized and can be minimized only 
through a centrally administered loan service 
maintaining consolidated loan records. 

The public reference service .—The public 
reference service is made up of the general refer¬ 
ence and bibliography division and nine other 
divisions differentiated from one another in 
terms of subject and regional specialization or in 
terms of the type of material in association with 
which their respective activities are carried on. 
Before proceeding to a description of each divi¬ 
sion in turn, a brief account can be given of the 
common activities which bring them together 
in the public reference service. Public reference 
divisions exist to provide a reference service 
to readers in the Library and, through cor¬ 
respondence, outside the Library; they main¬ 
tain special indexes and reference cata¬ 
logs; they compile bibliographies and guides to 
the collections; and their chiefs function as 
recommending officers in the fields of knowledge 
reflected by their specialization. 

Certain of the divisions, in addition to their 
reference functions, administer special collec¬ 
tions of material not suitable for inclusion in 
the general classified collections of books. The 
manuscripts division, for example, has custody 
of the general collections of manuscripts, tran¬ 
scripts of manuscripts, and photographic re¬ 
productions of manuscripts. It catalogs and 
classifies such material and makes it available 
for use in a reading room which it administers. 


The maps division, the Orientalia division, and 
the prints and photographs division have identi- . 
cal responsibilities for the types of materials 
with which they are concerned. The rare books 
division is responsible for the custody and 
service of those copies of books which, because 
of their importance to the history of ideas, or 
their contribution to the progress of literature, 
or their provenience, or their association with 
great men and great events, or their monetary 
value, or their condition, require special facili¬ 
ties for their preservation and supervised use. 
The music division maintains custody not only 
of sheet music and sound recordings but of the 
literature of music as well. Standardized cata¬ 
loging and classification techniques have been 
developed to a point which assures the integra¬ 
tion of the diverse materials comprising the 
collection and which obviates the necessity of 
custodial separation on the basis of form. More¬ 
over, so much of the literature of music con¬ 
tains the only versions of the music itself that 
it would be practically and administratively 
impossible to distinguish between the two cate¬ 
gories. 

The general reference and bibliography 
division was created by combining the former 
division of bibliography with the reference 
personnel and functions of the former reading 
rooms division—a change first suggested in 
early 1940 in the Statement of the Librarian of 
Congress in Support of the Supplemental Esti¬ 
mates. As now constituted, the general refer¬ 
ence and bibliography division (fifty employ¬ 
ees) is organized to respond to all public refer¬ 
ence requests which do not require the atten¬ 
tion of the special divisions, whether such re¬ 
quests are received in person, by telephone, or 
by mail. 

All consultants and special projects, which 
formerly functioned under the immediate super¬ 
vision of the director of the department, are 
now administratively assigned to the general 
reference and bibliography division. This pro¬ 
vides a means of relating individual or tempo¬ 
rary special activities to the general and sus¬ 
tained reference work of the Library. 

The relation between specialized and general 
service in this instance is analogous to the rela¬ 
tion between specialists in medicine and the 
general practitioner. The general practitioner 
does not treat disease in general but rather those 
specific diseases which do not fall within one 
or another of the specialties or which fall within 
several of them. Further, the knowledge and 


32 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


skill of the competent general practitioner is 
such that he can treat the average case of 
many diseases which do fall within the special¬ 
ties; in most such cases it would be foolish and 
extravagant to employ the time and talent of a 
specialist. 

No library, no matter how rich and favored, 
can hope to provide a staff of specialists to cover 
the whole field of knowledge. Nor can the inter¬ 
ests and problems of readers be divided into 
neat compartments without overlapping or 
remainder. Current developments are apt to 
have little regard for yesterday’s academic spe¬ 
cializations. For example, the learned world in 
America is divided and organized on the basis 
of subject specialization. In the present emer¬ 
gency the nation has discovered that it needs 
not only subject specialists but area specialists 
as well. Methods of training regional specialists 
have had to be improvised. The regional bib¬ 
liographies prepared by nonspecialists in the 
general reference and bibliography division 
have contributed something to that training. 

The effect of the reorganization on the 
special divisions is to free them for their proper 
work. The aeronautics division (five employ¬ 
ees) has been relieved of its former custodial 
responsibilities and encouraged to undertake 
a more elaborate bibliographical program in 
connection with the nation-wide reference 
service it renders. The Hispanic foundation 
(eight employees), relieved of custody of its 
materials and separated from its archive of 
Hispanic culture, which, as a photograph col¬ 
lection, becomes a part of the prints and 
photographs division, is free for its proper refer¬ 
ence function of developing and co-ordinating 
the Hispanic activities of the Library and foster¬ 
ing cultural interchange with Hispanic na¬ 
tions. The foundation will continue to prepare 
special bibliographies, guides, indexes, and 
other publications appropriate to its service. 

The manuscripts division (seventeen em¬ 
ployees) has not been changed internally by 
the reorganization. However, its newly estab¬ 
lished position within the public reference 
service serves to define more precisely its 
primary functions in the field of American 
civilization. 

The maps division (nine employees) is 
responsible for the custody and service of the 
collections of maps and atlases. The books 
formerly in the custody of this division have 
been transferred to the general collections in 
the custody of the stack and reader division. 


As in the case of aeronautics, the maps division, 
relieved of part of its custodial responsibility, 
is free to develop an extensive reference service 
in the fields of geography and cartography. 

The music division (sixteen employees), like 
the manuscripts division, remains essentially 
unchanged in the reorganization. It is relieved, 
however, of the task of maintaining a loan serv¬ 
ice of its materials. 

The Orientalia division (fourteen employ¬ 
ees), formerly the Asiatic division, is responsible 
for the custody and service of all materials 
written or printed in oriental languages (includ¬ 
ing Chinese, Japanese, Semitic, Arabic, Persian, 
Turkish, etc.). The former Semitic division 
has been made a section of the Orientalia 
division. The responsibility of the Hispanic 
■foundation for fostering cultural relations with 
the Hispanic countries is matched by a similar 
responsibility which the Orientalia division has 
of fostering cultural interchange with oriental 
nations. 

The renaming of the prints and photographs 
division (eleven employees) represents an 
attempt to indicate the true responsibilities of 
the former fine arts division with regard to 
graphic materials in its custody. Books on art 
in the custody of the former fine arts division 
have been transferred to the general collections. 
Because of the importance of prints and photo¬ 
graphs in connection with exhibits, the exhibits 
office has been transferred to the prints and 
photographs division, and exhibits have been 
made the special responsibility of an assistant 
chief of this division. Although this assistant 
chief becomes, in effect, the executive officer 
responsible for exhibits, the responsibility for 
initiating projects for exhibits and assisting 
in the assembly and preparation of materials 
continues to be a function of the chiefs of 
Reference and other divisions. 

In addition to custodial responsibility, the 
rare books division (nine employees) main¬ 
tains a reference service appropriate to its col¬ 
lections. Most requests for reference service 
which necessitate the consultation of incu¬ 
nabula, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century pub¬ 
lications, American imprints before 1820, the 
principal editions of important historical, sci¬ 
entific, and literary works, first editions, limited 
editions, de luxe editions, specially and extra¬ 
illustrated editions, fine bindings, unique 
copies, the literature of the typographic and 
book arts, and other collections of rare books are 
directed to it. 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


33 


The Slavic center soon to be established will 
be modeled on the Hispanic foundation. It will 
render reference service in respect to the Li¬ 
brary’s Slavic collections and will foster cultural 
interchange with the Slavic countries. 

There remain several former divisions of the 
Reference Department which have not been 
accounted for in the above statement. Of these, 
the photoduplication service has been trans¬ 
ferred to the administrative offices under the 
direction of the chief assistant librarian. The 
union catalog has been transferred to the Proc¬ 
essing Department, where it obviously belongs; 
and the service for the blind, being a loan serv¬ 
ice, has been made a section of the loan divi¬ 
sion. The fiscal and administrative sections of 
books for the adult blind have been transferred 
to the administrative offices under the chief 
assistant librarian. The former book selection 
and reference work of this division is now the 


responsibility of the public reference service. 
The reference service formerly conducted by 
the Smithsonian division is now the responsi¬ 
bility of a consultantship in the history of sci¬ 
ence. As a reflection of our experience in the 
operation of a science and technology reading 
room, and responsive to demands upon our 
collections in those fields, plans for the future 
anticipate the creation of a science division 
which will include not only this consultantship 
but the aeronautics division and other scientific 
reference services, existing or projected. 

A summary of the department’s func¬ 
tions and the units by which they are 
performed was prepared for the use of 
the Library staff. Since it gives a con¬ 
venient over-all view of the organiza¬ 
tion, it is reproduced here. 


A. The department maintains custody of— 


i. 


The general collections (exclusive of law, but includ¬ 
ing Hispanic materials previously in the custody of 
the Hispanic foundation, the proceedings and trans¬ 
actions of learned societies and academies formerly 
in the custody of the Smithsonian division; the litera¬ 
ture of geography previously in the custody of the 
division of maps; aeronautical publications previous¬ 
ly in the custody of the aeronautics division; Slavic 
materials previously in the custody of the Slavic 
division) through 


»> the stack and reader division 


2. Manuscripts (including transcripts and photographic j the manuscripts division 

reproductions of manuscripts) through J 

3. Rare books (including microfilm reproductions ofl the rare books div ; sion 

printed materials) through J 

4. Prints and photographs through } the prints and photographs division 

5. Maps and atlases (including topographic views) j the maps division 

through J 

6. Music and the literature of music through } the music division 

7. Embossed books and sound books for the blind through J the loan division 

8. Current periodicals, documents, pamphlets, and) 

ephemera; and newspapers, current and noncurrent, \ the serials division 

through ) 

9. Orientalia through ! the division of Orientalia 


10. Microfilms in general through 


) the microfilm reading room in the 
j rare books division 




34 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


B. The department processes materials* as follows: 

1. Prints and photographs through 

2. Manuscripts (including transcripts and photocopies 
of manuscripts) through 

3. Maps and atlases through 

4. Embossed books and talking books for the blind 
through 

5. Materials in Chinese, Japanese, Indie, and other 
Eastern languages through 


the prints and photographs division 
the manuscripts division 
the maps division 

the service for the blind section of 
the loan division 

the division of Orientalia 


C. The department circulates materials to readers— 

1. In the general reading rooms and study rooms through } the stack and reader division 

I the special divisions above named 
and through the microfilm read¬ 
ing room in the rare books divi¬ 
sion 

3. Outside the Library buildings through j the loan division 


D. The department gives reference service— 

1. To Members of Congress— 

a) In all matters relating to legislation through } the legislative reference service f 

b) In all other matters } See below 

2. To investigators and general readers— 

a) In the history and topography of the United 
States 


i) By manuscripts, transcripts of manuscripts, 
photoreproductions of manuscripts and simi¬ 
lar source materials through 

ii) By pictorial materials illustrative of Ameri¬ 
can life through 


the manuscripts division and the in¬ 
cumbent of the chair of American 
history 

the prints and photographs division 


iii) By maps through } the maps division 

iv) By rare printed Americana through } the rare books division 

v) By other printed materials (including local 1 the general reference and bibliog- 

history and genealogy) through / raphy division 


b) In Hispanic history through 


} the Hispanic foundation 


c) 


In Far Eastern, Indie, and Near Eastern history 
through 


the division of Orientalia 


d) In Slavic history through 


1 the Slavic center (which is to be 
j created) 


e) 

f) 


In Netherlands history through 


} the Netherlands studies unit 


In history—general, national and local (except 
the history of the United States)—through 


the general reference and bibliog¬ 
raphy division or one of the spe¬ 
cial regional unitst 


* All processing procedures followed by divisions of the Reference Department are subject to the approval and revision of the 
director of the Processing Department. 

t The legislative reference service is available only to Members of Congress. 

J The special regional units are: the Hispanic foundation, the Slavic center, the division of Orientalia (consisting of Chinese, 
Japanese, Indie, and Semitic sections and the provisional Iranian section), and the Netherlands studies unit. 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


35 


g) In geography and cartography through } the maps division 


) the general reference and bibliog¬ 
raphy division or one of the spe¬ 
cial regional units 


i) In political science, economics, and sociology 
through 


the general reference and bibliog¬ 
raphy division, the serials divi¬ 
sion (and its government publi¬ 
cations section), or one of the 
special regional units 


] the census library project of the 
j) In population and demography through >• general reference and bibliog- 

j raphy division 


k) In education through 


} the general reference and bibliog¬ 
raphy division, or one of the spe¬ 
cial regional units 


l) In music and the literature of music (including) 

ing American folk song and sound recording) > the music division 
through j 


m) In the graphic arts (including fine prints and the 
literature of the fine arts, together with the ico¬ 
nography and photographic record of the life of 
the people of the United States) through 


the prints and photographs division 


n ) In literature and linguistics (including fiction) 
through 


the general reference and bibliog¬ 
raphy division and its consultant 
in poetry in English, the rare 
books division, or one of the 
special regional units 


o ) In aeronautics through 

p) In natural sciences through 


} the aeronautics division 

) the general reference and bibliog¬ 
raphy division and its consultant 
in the history of science (Jefferson 
Room) 


q ) In applied sciences (technology) through 

r ) In military and naval science through 

s) In bibliography and library science through 


) the general reference and bibliog- 
/ raphy division (Jefferson Room) 

) the general reference and bibliog- 
J raphy division (Jefferson Room) 

} the general reference and bibliog¬ 
raphy division, or any of the spe¬ 
cial divisions 


t) In incunabula, . history of printing, private j rare k 00 k s division 

presses, and editiones principes through J 

u) In periodicals and newspapers in general through } the serials division 

v) In manuscripts in general through } the manuscripts division 




36 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


ADMINISTRATIVE UNITS 
An account of the regrouping and re¬ 
organization of the several administra¬ 
tive services and offices of the Library 
could be made as long as it would in¬ 
evitably be dull. Since, however, it was 
the inadequacy of the fiscal services 
which most impressed outside surveyors 
of the Library, such as the representa¬ 
tives of the Bureau of the Budget, and 
since the lack of an adequate personnel 
office and a considered personnel policy 
was a continuing annoyance through 
three years and more, some account of 
reorganization in this general field is 
essential. It could be summed up, in 
terms of the grouping of the units in¬ 
volved, by saying that they were first 
combined in an Administrative Depart¬ 
ment (General Order No. 962 of June 
28, 1940) and then transferred, when the 
Administrative Department disappeared 
and the chief assistant librarian took 
over his proper duties as general execu¬ 
tive officer, to the office of the chief as¬ 
sistant librarian (General Order No. 
1190 of July 5, 1943). But though this 
summary account would take care of the 
secretary’s office (ten employees), the 
supply office (four employees), the 
mail and delivery service (fourteen 
employees), the office of the superin¬ 
tendent of Library buildings and grounds 
(two hundred and eighty-six employees), 
and the disbursing office (seven em¬ 
ployees), none of which were materially 
altered internally, and though it would 
also suffice, perhaps, for the photodupli¬ 
cation service (ten employees) and the 
division of books for the adult blind 
(twelve employees), both of which were 
added to the chief assistant librarian’s 
cares when he took over his executive 
duties, it would not account adequately 
for changes in the accounts office (six 
employees) and the personnel office 


(twenty-two employees). Nor would it 
cover the publications office (one em¬ 
ployee) and the information office (two 
employees), which had not previously 
existed. 

Of these latter it is enough to say that 
each performs the duties which would 
be expected of its name. One handles 
stocks of Library publications and the 
like. The other supplies information to 
the public through the press and other¬ 
wise. The new duties of the accounts 
office and the personnel office must, 
however, be spelled out at greater length. 

Accounts office .—General Order No. 
962 supplied an officer the Library had 
lacked in the past and had badly needed: 
a budget officer. The administrative as¬ 
sistant as director of the department was 
to act as budget officer of the Library, 
supervising the preparation of budget 
estimates, developing programs of budg¬ 
eting expenditures, and co-ordinating 
work within these programs. 

To supply the administrative assistant 
with budgetary information and to im¬ 
pose needed controls on expenditures, 
a more active and modern accounts of¬ 
fice was necessary. It was provided by 
the same general order. The accounts 
office was given authority for the main¬ 
tenance of budgetary control through 
allotments made by the administrative 
assistant and was authorized to exercise 
accounting control over the receipt and 
expenditure of appropriated, gift, and 
trust funds and the requisitioning of 
cash. It was also to examine and to ap¬ 
prove for payment all pay rolls and 
vouchers, to examine the disbursing of¬ 
ficer’s accounts current prior to the Li¬ 
brarian’s approval, and to prepare re¬ 
ports and statistics needed for adminis¬ 
trative and budgetary planning. 

At the same time, new and modern 
procedures were worked out for the ac- 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


37 


counts office with the aid and advice of 
representatives of the general accounting 
office. The accounts now maintained by 
the accounts office comprise a general 
ledger for appropriated, gift, and trust 
funds and for the funds of the Library 
of Congress trust fund board, as well as 
an allotment ledger for appropriated, 
gift, and trust funds. Allotments are 
made by the budget officer to the various 
departments and divisions of the Library 
authorized to incur obligations: the Ac¬ 
quisitions Department (formerly the 
accessions division), the card division, 
books for the adult blind, the Copyright 
Office, the mail, music, personnel, photo¬ 
duplication, publications, and supply 
offices, and the superintendent of Li¬ 
brary buildings and grounds. The ac¬ 
counts office prepares monthly state¬ 
ments for the various divisions reflecting 
the status of funds under all allot¬ 
ments. 

Prior to July i, 1940, there were a 
number of divisions of the Library han¬ 
dling collections of moneys. At present 
there are two: the secretary’s office, 
which receives remittances on account 
of card sales, sale of photo-duplications, 
gifts, and miscellaneous transactions, 
and the Copyright Office, which, in ac¬ 
cordance with the Act of March 4,1909, 
receives and deposits all copyright fees. 

Accounts are maintained on an in¬ 
cumbrance basis, and all financial trans¬ 
actions are adjusted to this basis. Only 
those officers to whom funds are allotted 
may incur obligations, and then only to 
the extent of their allotments and sub¬ 
ject to other necessary limitations. No 
account is acceptable for payment unless 
it appears that a proper statement of the 
obligation was entered in the books of 
the accounts office at the time of its in¬ 
currence, nor is the disbursing officer au¬ 
thorized to make payment until the ac¬ 


count is approved for payment by the 
accounts officer. 

The general effect of these changes has 
been to separate certifying responsibility 
from auditing responsibility. Formerly 
the office of the chief clerk certified ac¬ 
counts and audited its own certifica¬ 
tions. Now operating officers certify and 
the accounts office audits. The new prac¬ 
tice has made for sense and simplicity, 
as well as for safety. Documents are now 
signed, wherever possible, by officers 
having personal knowledge of the facts 
to which they put their names; and the 
meaningless authentication of forms by 
officers whose signatures are necessarily 
mere formalities has disappeared. 

Personnel office .—When the chief 
clerk’s office was abolished in June, 1940, 
and the Administrative Department es¬ 
tablished, the personnel section of the 
chief clerk’s office became the personnel 
office of the Library with a director of 
personnel at its head. It was given re¬ 
sponsibility for interviewing applicants 
and for filing and classifying applica¬ 
tions. It was to maintain personnel rec¬ 
ords, including those formerly main¬ 
tained in the office of the superintendent 
of Library buildings and grounds. It was 
directed to co-operate actively with the 
Civil Service Commission in classifica¬ 
tion matters. It was assigned responsi¬ 
bility for the execution of approved per¬ 
sonnel policies. It was charged with the 
duty of hearing grievances and handling 
appeals from efficiency ratings and de¬ 
cisions as to classification. The Library’s 
emergency room and the nurse were 
placed under the supervision of its di¬ 
rector. 

The duties of the office, broadly de¬ 
scribed in 1940, were more precisely de¬ 
fined by General Order No. 1191 of July 
7, 1943, issued when the administrative 
units of the Library, including personnel, 


38 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


were transferred to the office of the chief 
assistant librarian. By this latter order 
the personnel office became responsible, 
under the direction of the chief assistant 
librarian, for the full personnel manage¬ 
ment of the Library, including all mat¬ 
ters relating to recruitment, placement, 
classification, employee relations, griev¬ 
ances, training, health, safety, pay rolls, 
efficiency ratings. It is responsible not 
only for the maintenance of central per¬ 
sonnel records of leave, retirement, and 
employee status but also for the study 
and development of new policies and 
procedures as they become necessary. 

Reorganization in the personnel field 
was not limited, however, to the admin¬ 
istrative organization of the office. It 
extended to personnel policy as well. Li¬ 
brary unions were recognized and en¬ 
couraged as valuable instruments of 
good administration. A promotions poli¬ 
cy, calling for the posting of vacancies, 
was worked out in co-operation with Li¬ 
brary unions and staff members. A griev¬ 
ance procedure, which has been widely 
and favorably commented on in the gov¬ 
ernment, was developed in extended 
conversations in my office between rep¬ 
resentatives of the unions, representa¬ 
tives of the staff generally, and adminis¬ 
trative officers. A staff advisory com¬ 
mittee was set up at the suggestion of 
union representatives and has functioned 
effectively for two years as a channel for 
employee proposals and criticisms and 
as an originator of administrative sug¬ 
gestions of its own. A professional forum 
meets once a month under the chairman¬ 
ship of the Librarian in his professional, 
rather than his official, capacity to hear 
accounts of Library operations and to 
discuss the central unsolved problem of 
a librarian’s work—the catalog (or 
other) control of the constantly increas¬ 


ing mass of printed and near-printed 
material. 

These latter innovations are parts of 
a general pattern of development which 
one will approve or disapprove as he 
approves or disapproves government by 
discussion. There are those, of course, 
who disapprove of it—and not all of 
them live in totalitarian states. Men of 
certain temperaments find talk annoy¬ 
ing—particularly talk in public enter¬ 
prise. Talk, they say, wastes time. And 
they are right, of course. But talk, kept 
within proper limits, can save time also 
and can gain what time alone might lose. 
In any event, my colleagues and I— 
most of my colleagues, at least—believe 
firmly in government by discussion and 
believe, further, that experience has jus¬ 
tified our belief. We conduct the Li¬ 
brary’s central administration through 
the Librarian’s Conference, a daily meet¬ 
ing of department heads and principal 
administrative officers which debates 
policy decisions and in which principal 
administrative assignments are made. 

Final responsibility for decision is 
still, of course, the Librarian’s, as it 
must be by law; but conference discus¬ 
sions insure a hearing for all points of 
administrative view and keep the Li¬ 
brary’s various officers informed of each 
other’s activities, with the result that ad¬ 
ministrative interchangeability becomes 
a practical possibility rather than a paper 
theory. No officer of the Library of Con¬ 
gress feels that he and he alone can do his 
job. Others can do and have done it. Mr. 
Clapp, originally a reference man, ran 
the Administrative Department for three 
years and now heads the Acquisitions 
Department. Dr. Evans, originally head 
of legislative reference and later head of 
the Reference Department, is now, as 
chief assistant librarian, the director of 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


39 


the administrative services previously 
run by Mr. Clapp. Dr. Hanke, whose 
principal responsibility as director of the 
Hispanic foundation has been to foster 
sound relations with the cultural and 
learned institutions of the other Ameri¬ 
can republics, is assistant director of the 
Reference Department in charge of pub¬ 
lic reference. Administrative officers of 
the Library have been warned that they 
are to move from department to depart¬ 
ment to insure the Library of Congress 
against the academic isolationism which 
has had such harmful effects in American 
universities and, through the universi¬ 
ties, on American education. I hope they 
believe the warning was seriously in¬ 
tended. 

Government by discussion is not, 
however, limited to the Librarian’s Con¬ 
ference. Both the Processing and Ac¬ 
quisitions departments have committees, 
under the chairmanship of their direc¬ 
tors, on the policies of their operations, 
the members of which include the prin¬ 
cipal officers of other units concerned 
in, or affected by, their work. Biblio¬ 
graphical and other publications are 
planned by a committee under the chair¬ 
manship of Dr. Hanke. And an effort 
was made before the war—an effort 
which we hope to renew when the war 


is over—to plan the relation of the Li¬ 
brary of Congress with the learned world 
and particularly with other libraries 
through, and with the advice of, a group 
of scholars, librarians, and lovers of 
books, whom we have called, in their 
informally corporate capacity, the “Li¬ 
brarian’s Council.” 

I should like to end a paper, which is 
already far too long, on this theme. 
Whatever else our reorganization has 
accomplished—and I hope and believe 
it has provided a sensible, orderly, and 
manageable structure, strong enough to 
support the great future of which the 
Library of Congress is so manifestly 
capable—whatever else the reorganiza¬ 
tion of the Library has accomplished, 
it has given, I trust, an increasing num¬ 
ber of men and women the sense of par¬ 
ticipating creatively and responsibly 
in a work which all of them may well 
feel proud to share. 

If it has done that, I shall feel that 
my five years as Librarian of Congress, 
meager as their accomplishment must 
necessarily seem by comparison with the 
great decades which went before, were' 
not without their value to an institution 
I have learned not only to respect but 
love. 









